Oral Answers to Questions

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The Secretary of State was asked—

Identity Cards

Martin Linton: What his most recent estimate is of the annual cost to public funds of a stand-alone identity card.

Charles Clarke: Our estimate of the average annual operating costs of issuing passports and ID cards to British citizens was published last year and at present is unchanged at £584 million. As is the case with passports, those costs will be met in the main by fees rather than by a call on public funds. I have said that within our current estimates it will be affordable to set a charge of £30 for a stand-alone identity card issued to British citizens.

Martin Linton: If the cost is £30 for 10 years—in other words, £3 per person per year—and the benefits, according to figures agreed by the Home Office and the banks, are more than £20 per person per year, can my right hon. Friend see any rational reason why the House of Lords would have voted against the proposal on cost and benefit grounds?

Charles Clarke: I always hesitate to ascribe rationality to the House of Lords in its decisions, but it is legitimate to address the costs issues, as Members of both Houses have concerns about them. We have worked them through carefully. My hon. Friend is right to say that for a stand-alone card £3 a year is the figure that we have in mind, and the benefits of the reform would be massive for the whole country.

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown: For the 38 million people who are likely to have to register for an ID card—those over 16 and those who have been here for more than three months—can the Home Secretary tell us what the cost will be of the combined passport and ID card? If the estimate of £5 billion over 10 years is correct, it is on my calculation likely to be in excess of £120.

Charles Clarke: The hon. Gentleman is wrong. As I have indicated before, the average annual cost of passports and ID cards is unchanged at about £584 million a year. We estimate that the cost per joint passport and card would be some £93. The fees have not yet been set: they can be set only if the legislation is passed by a vote of Parliament on the precise fee regime, but £93 is our combined estimate.

Paul Flynn: Can we define the difference between Bill Gates's suggestion for the near future and what the Government suggest? Bill Gates's suggestion is for a link between the biometric information and one single card, which is a relatively simple matter. However, the Government suggest that there should be a differentiation between the information on one biometric identifier and many millions of others. The process that has been suggested by the Government is many millions of times more complicated and more expensive than what Bill Gates suggests. Can my right hon. Friend give us some information on that?

Charles Clarke: My hon. Friend makes an interesting comparison. I have not studied Bill Gates's proposal in detail, but I understand that he argues that the national identity register, which we are introducing, with its 13 biometric identifiers, would give the assurance that at some point in the future the biometric identifier itself, rather than the card, could provide the identity security that is required. Obviously, my hon. Friend is right to say that it would be simpler if we had one identity system for the whole country for every time that identity needs to be checked, but many arguments have been made in this House and elsewhere about the disadvantages of having one database for everything. Instead, we have one narrow database that enables everybody to secure their own identity, which we think is a major step forward.

Peter Bone: The Home Secretary has told us that his estimate is £584 million per year, which is a lot of money. However, some hon. Members will be a little sceptical of Government estimates, because in the past they have been woefully out. Would the Home Secretary stake any money on the £584 million being reasonably accurate, or does he think that the figure might go up?

Charles Clarke: Actually, I think that it is accurate and likely to go down, rather than up. The nearest major IT project in the area was for the passports agency, which was widely criticised five or six years ago. Its IT programme now handles some 40 million to 44 million database files and had the most efficient public service in the country, beating major private sector providers from the consumer point of view, such as Amazon, eBay and Virgin, as the result of a major effective public sector IT investment, changing the quality of life for everyone.

Lynne Jones: According to parliamentary answers I have received, the cost of operating and maintaining the verification services is not included in the £93 charge to applicants. What is the Government's estimate of that particular cost? How much will be met by the public sector, how much is to be met by charges and what are my right hon. Friend's assumptions about the number of people who will want to use the verification services and the charge that they will be asked to bear? I understand that when potential users were offered a charge of 57p, not many were keen.

Charles Clarke: I have just published overall figures for verification and all the other services, but three sources of income will deal with the charges. The first is the fees themselves, which is why I said that fees would make up the giant's share, rather than a call on public funds. The second is a small contribution from public funds, which is the only amount that could be spent on other things—as is widely alleged—and the third is income that could be derived from contracts with organisations that use the database. Those are important factors, which is why I was able to tell the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Bone) a moment ago that I think the figure will end up being less than £584 million, although I think that is a firm and strong estimate.

Alistair Carmichael: Why does not the Home Secretary demonstrate the courage of his convictions by allowing the Lords amendments on costs to stand? Surely, if his scheme is costed and affordable he should have no problem in demonstrating that before bringing it to the House for implementation?

Charles Clarke: We have no problem in demonstrating that and have done so, but the amendment tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Frank Dobson) is of a rather more profound nature. It states that there should be a regular report to the House setting out the full cost situation so that the House can debate and consider it as it wishes. That is a rather superior way of doing what the House of Lords was edging towards. The amendment also reflects concerns expressed, fairly, on both sides of the House about whether the cost system is under control. A system of six-monthly reports is a good way of dealing with that.

David Davis: The Liberal Democrat spokesman made a good point: few people really believe the Home Office numbers and the House of Lords is trying to find a way of establishing a reliable figure. Let us take things out of arcana such as the billions and House of Commons procedure. If the Home Secretary was trying to pay for a capital project, such as a house extension, and the contractor came to him and said, "I know I've overrun before on money and time. I'm not going to give an estimate because that upsets my subcontractors, but I'll let you know every six months how much I've overrun", would the right hon. Gentleman accept that contract? The answer of course is no, so why should the House of Commons accept that from him?

Charles Clarke: I must say that I think that the right hon. Gentleman has put it completely the wrong way round. If I indeed wanted work done on my house, as he suggests, I should first make a clear estimate of what I was ready to spend and on what; secondly, I would not tell the bidders how much money was available for them and, thirdly, I would establish a contract to be tendered for on a competitive basis. That is precisely the right way to give us value for money.

David Davis: Let us test the process against some real figures. The right hon. Gentleman cited the passport agency, which nobody in their right mind would hold up as a serious project, so let us try some others. In the green book, his right hon. Friend the Chancellor pointed out that 54 per cent. of Government IT projects fail. Since 2001, four major projects in four Departments have gone seriously wrong; their collective budget was about £9 billion and they overran by £33.9 billion—nearly £34 billion. Can the Home Secretary name one IT project costing more than £1 billion that was on time and on cost and delivered what it was supposed to?

Charles Clarke: The right hon. Gentleman mentioned the passport agency, which has done precisely that. It is a ridiculous state of affairs for the right hon. Gentleman to assert that no Government can ever organise an IT project in the interests of the country. I am perfectly well aware that there are major issues in both the public and private sectors about major IT projects. As somebody originally from the private sector, the right hon. Gentleman will know that that is the case and he is right to say, in terms of his first question, that we should have a proper contractually based tendering process, which is precisely what we have.

International Arrest Warrants

Phyllis Starkey: Whether his Department is planning to amend the law on international arrest warrants.

Andy Burnham: The Government are currently considering a range of issues relating to the issuing of arrest warrants in international cases, but have not yet concluded what changes, if any, are required to current legislation. Any proposals for amending the current legislation would be a matter for Parliament.

Phyllis Starkey: The Minister will be aware of press reports that the Government are considering removing the right of an individual victim to apply to the magistrates court for an arrest warrant against the alleged perpetrator of war crimes. If that right were removed, does he agree that it would leave it open for the UK Government to decide not to proceed against certain alleged war criminals simply because to do so might embarrass a foreign Government? Does he agree that that does not square with the Government's duty, under the Geneva convention, of universal jurisdiction?

Andy Burnham: Let me begin by assuring my hon. Friend that the Government stand firm behind the principle of the international arrest warrant system and are clear that the UK will never provide safe haven to those guilty of atrocities, but she refers to the process by which international arrest warrants are secured. They can be applied for and granted to private individuals by a district judge, the effect of which is that someone can be arrested and detained with no immediate prospect of any charge being brought. The balance must be right, and the question is whether the prosecuting authority that is required to bring the case should have a role in whether the person is arrested, but I have heard what my hon. Friend has said, as has the Home Secretary, and we will, of course, take her views on board in taking the matter forward.

Philip Hollobone: What discussions has the Home Office had recently with the Israeli Government about General Almog? Is the Home Office in discussion with other countries about the enforcement of international arrest warrants on their citizens?

Andy Burnham: The Home Office has had discussions with the Israeli authorities, following the case that the hon. Gentleman mentions, and has held discussions with a range of parties who have had an interest in that case. As I mentioned in my reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes, South-West (Dr. Starkey), the issue is whether there is an inconsistency and whether the authorities that would be responsible for bringing a prosecution should have a role in the arrest. It is important to point out that we may be talking about individuals who are not normally resident in the UK and are not under investigation by the British police, and there could be very real practical difficulties in bringing evidence to this country about whether a prosecution should happen here. My point is simply about whether it is right that the prosecuting authorities have a role in deciding whether an arrest should take place in the first place, given that that would deprive an individual of their liberty for a serious amount of time.

Emily Thornberry: Does my hon. Friend agree that, if someone from another country comes here and it is found through the great good sense of a district judge that the person may be guilty of war crimes, it is our duty as a nation to prosecute them properly and that, in considering whether the law should be changed, we should weigh in the balance very heavily the great good sense and experience of district judges?

Andy Burnham: I can say to my hon. Friend that of course the Government remain absolutely committed to the principle that those guilty of atrocities should not find a safe haven in this country. I would also say to her, though, that the duty to prosecute those accused of atrocities falls quite rightly to the public authorities of this country. In hearing what she says and in agreeing with her that the onus needs to be on ensuring that those responsible face up to their actions, we need to consider whether the public authorities that would be responsible for mounting any prosecution should have a role in deciding whether that person should be arrested at the beginning of the process.

Police Restructuring

Alan Beith: What discussions his Department has had with police authorities in the north-east of England about the start-up and running costs of the proposed amalgamated police force.

Hazel Blears: We have been working closely with the police authorities in the north-east and the Association of Police Authorities nationally. We have received business cases from the north-east region, which include both start-up and ongoing costs. We have been working with experts on the financial detail of those business cases to assess the costs of merger. The Home Secretary and myself met with chief constables and chairs from the north-east on 6 February to discuss the way forward.

Alan Beith: Given that Northumbria council tax payers currently have a police force that meets Government criteria in both size and performance, what indication can the right hon. Lady give of the amount by which council tax will rise in the Northumbria area, first, so that it equalises the precepts of the other forces and, secondly, to meet the start-up costs of reorganisation? What figure does she suggest?

Hazel Blears: First, as the right hon. Gentleman will recognise, the protective services assessment from Her Majesty's inspector of constabulary says that the one viable option to go forward is a regional strategic force. I also emphasise that the Northumbria police force's case said:
	"There are clear operational benefits of moving to a regional strategic force in particular in relation to the ability to invest in level 2 protective services."
	Although the right hon. Gentleman raises an important issue about financing and the equalisation of precepts, I remind him that this is about trying to get improved services for the people of Northumbria, as well as those across the region. We have a working group that is looking at start-up and precept costs, as well as ongoing costs, and we are looking at a number of different models, but this is about not simply having a larger force, but being able to release resources to invest in better policing for the people in the right hon. Gentleman's constituency and the rest of the region.

Nick Herbert: The cost of the four regional mergers that the Home Secretary announced last week has been estimated at over £177 million. Once again, the Government are proceeding with restructuring without any idea of the cost, which will fall largely on local taxpayers. When asked about mergers on 25 January, the Prime Minister said:
	"It is not a question of forcing them through".—[Official Report, 25 January 2006; Vol. 441, c. 1426.]
	If any of the police authorities in the affected regions object to being amalgamated, will the Minister therefore give an undertaking, in accordance with the Prime Minister's pledge, not to force those mergers through compulsorily? Or is it, once again, a question of the Prime Minister's words counting for nothing?

Hazel Blears: The hon. Gentleman is entirely wrong when he asserts that we do not have regard to the costs. In many cases, the costs that are coming in look as though they will achieve payback over a period of two or three years, not the 10 or 20 years that was first assessed. As long ago as 1993, his party said:
	"A large number of separate forces inevitably means that they duplicate facilities and headquarters structures. It is questionable whether 43 separate organisations are now needed to run police operations."
	That was his party then, and the leader of his party has recently said—

Several hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. That is it.

Emergency Services Personnel

Jeremy Wright: How many of those convicted of a criminal offence in the last year for which figures are available were employed within the emergency services at the time of their offence.

Paul Goggins: Statistics are not maintained centrally on the occupation of persons convicted of criminal offences. Figures collated by the Independent Police Complaints Commission indicate that in the last year for which figures are available—2003–04—177 police officers were convicted of criminal offences, 122 of which were traffic offences.

Jeremy Wright: I thank the Minister for that answer, but may I invite him to look at the issue from a slightly different angle? He will know that post-traumatic stress disorder is increasingly being recognised in the emergency services generally and in the police force particularly and that, in some cases, it can lead to domestic violence, alcoholism and, through that, to other offences. Will he look into what his Department is doing to ensure that those who have post-traumatic stress disorder, particularly in the police force, are looked after and supported to ensure that the consequences of that condition are minimised wherever possible?

Paul Goggins: I thank the hon. Gentleman for a very constructive suggestion, which I will consider carefully. I am very happy to discuss the matter with him in greater detail. I am pleased that the thrust of his question is one of support for people in our emergency services. They face some very difficult situations and they need good occupational health and the kind of support that he described. I very much welcome his proposal.

Terrorism Bill

Ashok Kumar: What consultations he has undertaken with ethnic minority communities on the Terrorism Bill.

Tony McNulty: The Government did not undertake consultation specifically with ethnic minority communities on the provisions in the Terrorism Bill partly because the timetable for bringing the legislation forward was accelerated in the wake of the July bombs and partly because the Bill goes to the entire community rather than specific communities. However, in order to provide ethnic minority and other communities with an opportunity to express their views on the Bill other than through their representatives in Parliament, the Government have asked the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, Lord Carlile, to consider the impact of the Bill specifically on community and race equality issues.

Ashok Kumar: I thank the Minister for that reply and praise the Government for making immense efforts to talk to ethnic minority communities and to build up an excellent dialogue with them. I recently met members of the Hindu community who expressed their concerns that they have not been involved in consultation and their concerns about the legislation. May I urge the Minister to talk to the Hindu community and make them feel part and parcel of the integral discussions that he has been having?

Tony McNulty: I thank my hon. Friend for his kind words. The point that he raises is entirely fair. There has been some concern expressed among some non-Muslim ethnic minority communities that perhaps attention has been focused too much on the Muslim community. However, we do not accept that. Clearly we have done much with the Muslim community, but if we have to do more with other communities, we will. My hon. Friend will know that we regularly meet the Hindu Council, the Hindu Forum of Britain, the National Council of Hindu Temples and the Swaminarayan temple at Neasden to discuss matters of terrorism and other matters not least, as he will know, in terms of immigration rules and ministers of religion. However, I take his point seriously. We need to consult all minority communities and, indeed, all communities as fairly and profoundly as possible.

James Clappison: Does the Minister agree that the vast majority of mosques are dedicated to peace and enlightenment, as are the worshippers who attend them? They are precisely the people who suffer the most from the negative perceptions created by extremists. Last summer, the Prime Minister saw a need for the Government to establish powers to close down mosques that fomented extremism. Is that still Government policy?

Tony McNulty: I totally agree with the hon. Gentleman's opening statement, as, I am sure, does the whole House. Everyone will know, not least because ofthe disparity between the last two sets of demonstrations, that in any community, frankly, it is the extremists who do down the moderates far more than anyone else. The hon. Gentleman said it was suggested that we should consider, in extremis, closing down specific facilities. I understand that we have examined that, but found that it would not be terribly practical, or, as he suggests, fair on the remaining members of the community around a mosque. Working with a community to eradicate extremists would be far more fruitful than simply closing a mosque.

Richard Burden: One of the things about which members of all communities are concerned is that the Bill's provisions should be applied even-handedly and it should be clear against whom they are targeted. When the matter was debated in the House, I thought the Government accepted that there had to be a clear link between allegations regarding the glorification of terrorism and incitement—direct and indirect—or reckless disregard of the effect that glorification could have on someone about to commit a terrorist act. Is the Minister aware that several statements that Ministers have made recently to put distance between the view of this House and the amendments of the other place indicate that the Government might not still be thinking that way? Would he like to give some reassurance on that point?

Tony McNulty: If my hon. Friend wants reassurance that we think that our proposals on glorification are preferable to the Lords amendments, I can certainly give that reassurance, but I suspect that that is not what he is after. On his first point, it is important not only that we focus our terrorism legislation on terrorists and extremists in all communities, but that we are seen to do so. If there is disquiet in any community because it is thought that that is not the case, we need to hear about it and allay fears, not least in the context of the question asked by the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison).

David Heathcoat-Amory: Does not the Abu Hamza case show a failure to enforce the existing law over many months, rather than a gap in the law, or a need for yet more offences? Will the Government and the Home Office thus stop using recent events as an excuse to pass yet more legislation and invent new offences, and instead enforce the existing law with more determination and dispatch?

Tony McNulty: In the first instance, I should say in passing that the gentleman concerned has appealed, so it would be inappropriate for me to say much more. However, in the broadest sense, we do not legislate just for the sake of it—we legislate because there are real and present dangers. The right hon. Gentleman shows in his question a simplistic approach that is, like the comments of the shadow Home Secretary over the weekend, profoundly and utterly irresponsible.

Louise Ellman: Will my hon. Friend give me an absolute assurance that the Government will be tough on incitement, even if they judge that such action might be unpopular in some small, localised communities?

Tony McNulty: I think that I can give such an assurance. If the point behind my hon. Friend's question is to ask whether we should in any way shackle the police in their interpretation of operational matters on the ground at any given time, whether during a demonstration or otherwise, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has made it clear that that should not be the case. However, watch this space on subsequent prosecutions.

Damian Green: The Minister is right to draw a distinction between the large and peaceful demonstration that we saw recently and the deplorable, less peaceful, smaller demonstration the week before. He must know that keeping minority communities united against terrorism is a vital weapon in the fight against terror, so how does he respond to Muslim leaders who support democratic values, such as Ajamal Masroor, of the Islamic Society of Britain, who says:
	"We have been trying . . . to win a war of ideas with a small number of our young people, and this legislation blows all of that hard work away"?
	Why will the Government not listen to moderate Muslim leaders, give up their ineffective anti-authoritarianism, and accept that bad anti-terrorism laws will simply bring the law into disrepute and not make British citizens any safer?

Tony McNulty: I do not think that the hon. Gentleman meant to describe our approach as anti-authoritarian, but I understand the gist of his remarks.
	There are myriad views and opinions throughout the community. First and foremost, we must shape and tailor our anti-terrorism legislation according to what is most effective and the advice that we get from security and police authorities. If, after that, there are messages to send to any community, we must do that to prevent misinterpretation—sometimes malevolent misinterpretation—of laws that go to the heart of the difficulties facing our society.

David Winnick: Whatever differences there may be between the two sides in respect of new laws, is it not encouraging that time and again in the past week we have seen Muslims make it perfectly clear that the hate merchants and agitators do not speak for the overwhelming majority of Muslims living in our country, who appreciate the freedoms and democracy that we have? Is it not important to deal with the small number of hate merchants that we know exist among the clerics?

Tony McNulty: I agree with my hon. Friend, and I am sure that the entire House does, too. Just this morning, I received a message from representatives of the main mosque in my constituency, voicing precisely the same concerns. They started by saying that, like many others, the community was offended by the representations of the Prophet in the cartoons in the Danish magazine, but they went on to make precisely the same points as my hon. Friend makes. We cannot and should not tailor our response to terror or extremists out of fear of the response from the very terrorists and extremists with whom we are trying to deal.

Prisons

Vincent Cable: What estimate he has made of the incidence of mental illness in prison.

Fiona Mactaggart: The most comprehensive national assessment was published in the Office for National Statistics survey of mental ill health in the prison population in England and Wales in 1997. It indicated that 90 per cent. of prisoners have at least one mental health disorder. Our five-year strategy for reducing reoffending includes a commitment to do more to make sure that people with mental disorders who offend get the treatment that they need.

Vincent Cable: Further to that answer and to last Thursday's statement, what action do the Government propose to take in respect of the 5,000 prisoners who are regarded as profoundly mentally ill to ensure that, when they are released, they are not turfed out on to the streets, seriously ill and homeless, so that they then live rough and almost certainly reoffend?

Fiona Mactaggart: We have two main approaches. We work through mental health in-reach teams in prisons, which work with community teams on a care plan. On an offender's release, they work together to pass that individual into the care of a community mental health team in a negotiated transfer. That did not happen before.

Brian Jenkins: My hon. Friend is aware of the national disgrace whereby individuals were freed from mental institutions under the National Health Service and Community Care Act 1990, but found that the only safe and secure place for them was prison and they offended to get back into a secure environment. Can she tell the House how many people who had spent time in a mental institution and who were released under the care in the community programme are in a normal prison today? If she cannot do that today, will she send me a note?

Fiona Mactaggart: As my hon. Friend predicts, I cannot give him those precise figures without prior notice. However, I can ensure that they are made available to the House. I can also assure him that we have put in place a series of steps to reduce the revolving door of offending and mental ill health. Proposals to amend mental health legislation will enable us to put more robust procedures in place to do that.

Justine Greening: Will the Minister also agree to consider the disgraceful situation in which many ex-servicemen find themselves when they suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder which exhibits itself as alcoholism and, again, domestic violence, and they end up in prison? Will she consider those people alongside the emergency service people mentioned earlier?

Fiona Mactaggart: In terms of responsibilities for former servicemen, the hon. Lady's question is probably best directed to the Ministry of Defence. I will ensure that my colleagues in that Department are made aware of it. Offending as a result of people's previous experiences is a critical consideration in everything that we are trying to do to reduce reoffending. She will have seen in the reducing reoffending action plan, which we published last week, that one of our ambitions is to bear down on all the features, including mental ill health, that lead to reoffending, and to have a much more comprehensive programme to achieve that. I can give her the assurance that she seeks when someone has offended and will draw her question to the attention of my colleagues so that we prevent the offending that concerns her.

Helen Jones: My hon. Friend will be aware that one difficulty in dealing with prisoners with mental illness is the shortage of psychiatrists working in the prison medical service and the problem of getting transfers to psychiatric hospitals. What progress is being made on recruiting more people with psychiatric qualifications into the prison medical service? Has there been any progress on shortening the time for the transfer of prisoners to psychiatric hospitals?

Fiona Mactaggart: My hon. Friend is right; that is a substantial challenge. There has been an increase in the number of transfers in recent years. In 2003, 721 prisoners were transferred. In the most recent year, that had increased to 892. Our ambition of ensuring that we have mental health services in prisons that are the equivalent of those in the community is critical to ensure that they work on all fours.
	To achieve that, we have done a couple of things that assist in that regard. The first is to reduce the difficulties, through an agreement between the Department of Health and the prisons department, by identifying the primary care trust responsible for mentally ill offenders. That has been communicated in a Prison Service instruction and a letter by the Department of Health. Secondly, we are consulting the Royal College of Psychiatrists about ensuring that—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I expect briefer responses to questions. It is unfair to Back Benchers.

Elfyn Llwyd: There is no doubt that among the mentally ill in prison are a considerable number of low-level criminals who are repeat offenders. Is it time to review the sentencing guidelines, because many of those people should not be in prison?

Fiona Mactaggart: The hon. Gentleman will be aware that we have a Sentencing Guidelines Council that can take such things into account. He will also be aware that, in our recent reducing reoffending action plan, we ensured that greater emphasis was put on community sentences. If those sentences include the proper support, the end that he mentions should be achieved.

Binge Drinking

Sally Keeble: What progress is being made in tackling binge drinking.

Hazel Blears: The Licensing Act 2003, which came into effect in November 2005, and a series of alcohol misuse enforcement campaigns have been central to the Government's wider strategy to reduce the harms caused through the misuse of alcohol. The results of the recent enforcement campaign show that, in participating basic command unit areas, all violent crime decreased by 11 per cent.

Sally Keeble: I congratulate my right hon. Friend and all the local police forces, particularly my own force in Northamptonshire, on the excellent results of their Christmas campaign. When the police receive extra powers to tackle binge drinking under the Violent Crime Reduction Bill, will she ensure that there is an equally proactive campaign so that they can use those powers to crack down further on binge drinking?

Hazel Blears: My hon. Friend makes an important point and I congratulate her on her tenacity and determination in taking a lead in her constituency to make sure that those powers are used. I am delighted that, in the latest enforcement campaign, the police used new powers to issue more than 8,000 penalty notices for disorder and I will certainly make sure that alcohol disorder zones, drinking banning orders and the closure powers in the Violent Crime Reduction Bill are used in a similarly proactive way.

Andrew Turner: As the Minister knows, the consequences of binge drinking are not confined to vomit in the gutters and fighting in the streets. Some individuals go home quietly and beat up their wives and girlfriends. On 19 January, I was told that it was too early to assess the impact of the new licensing hours on domestic violence. When will we be able see genuine, unspun comparisons, and what steps will the Minister take, not just to deal with the effects but to prevent alcohol-fuelled domestic violence?

Hazel Blears: The figures showing that violence has been reduced by 11 per cent., and serious violence by 14 per cent. following the latest campaign are not spun. They are absolutely accurate figures based on a comparison between October and December last year. Moreover, the Government have an extremely proud record of massive decreases in domestic violence and other crimes. An advertising campaign will start tomorrow and we are conducting a thorough evaluation of the impact of the licensing changes in five different areas that will look at a range of issues. The hon. Gentleman should acknowledge the Government's genuine achievements in tackling domestic violence.

Lindsay Hoyle: My right hon. Friend is well aware of the problems of binge drinking, but under-age binge drinking, too, causes violence, antisocial behaviour, vandalism and so on. What powers can be given to the police, not only to tackle people who sell alcohol to minors but to ensure that the culprits clean up the mess that they leave behind?

Hazel Blears: A few months ago, 50 per cent. of supermarkets sold alcohol to under-age youngsters but, following the latest enforcement campaign, the figure has gone down to 17 per cent., which is a dramatic achievement. I am grateful to the supermarkets for the pressure that they have brought to bear on the problem, but there is more that we can do. I am concerned about people urinating and vomiting in the street, which is why I am delighted that several hundred fixed penalty notices have been issued. My hon. Friend raised the important issue of reparation, which is certainly something that we could look at.

Adam Afriyie: In Windsor, a wonderful thing has happened. More policemen were put on the beat in crime and binge-drinking hot spots, and violent crime went down. Is the Minister saying that it is the 24-hour licensing laws that have brought about that change, or is it more policemen on the beat?

Hazel Blears: I think that it is a combination of things. There are more policemen are on the beat as a result of Government policy—there are an extra 13,000 officers since we came to government, and we will have an extra 24,000 community support officers up and down the country as well. However, the change has also taken place because thousands of young people are no longer thrown out on to the street at the same time, leading to fights for a taxi and to fighting in the kebab shop. The licensing changes are sensible and there has been a reduction in violence. I hope that that continues in the long term and we will certainly monitor the impact to make sure that that is the case.

Internet (Child Pornography)

Judy Mallaber: What further steps he plans to take to restrict the ability of individuals to download pornographic images of children from the internet.

Paul Goggins: The UK internet industry and the Internet Watch Foundation continue to lead the world in limiting access to illegal images. In April, this work will be further strengthened by the establishment of the new Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre.

Judy Mallaber: I welcome the work being undertaken by Government and the industry, but a BT survey showed that last week 35,000 attempts were made daily by its internet customers to download child porn websites—a three-fold increase, all blocked by BT's clean feed technology. However, one in five British households still have unrestricted, unfettered access to such illegal images of children being abused. That is outrageous. Will my hon. Friend put the industry on notice that those of its members who refuse to sort out their act had better do so before we introduce regulation to force them to introduce that technology?

Paul Goggins: I welcome my hon. Friend's contribution not just this afternoon, but throughout the years that she has been in the House, where she has constantly raised the issue, which is of key concern to so many. I also welcome the work that BT has done with its clean feed operation. Eighteen months ago, no sites were blocked because the technology did not exist. BT has introduced the technology and now 80 per cent. of internet service providers use it. The question is how we achieve the 100 per cent. that my hon. Friend and I want to see. I engage in regular discussions with the industry and I am determined that we will hit that 100 per cent., albeit through the voluntary route.

James Gray: The industry has a role to play, but so do the Government. When I was engaged in discussions with the Government on behalf of constituents recently about analogous sites that promote suicide, the Government responded that they could not do much about it because many of the sites came from overseas. Does the Minister agree that there is a role for the Government to play, leading the way internationally by bringing in a law banning such sites within the United Kingdom, even if we still receive the smut and filth from overseas?

Paul Goggins: The hon. Gentleman is right that many of the sites are based overseas and it is essential that we work with our international partners to bear down on the problem. May I give him one example? Within the G8, we led the way in pioneering a new international database of child abuse. We have handed the database over to Interpol. It will be possible to put any child abuse image anywhere in the world on the database, which means that we can find the victims and the perpetrators and, working together with our international colleagues, we can bear down on this dreadful problem.

Asylum Seekers

Jim Sheridan: What steps he is taking to tackle illegal working by asylum seekers.

Tony McNulty: The Government are firmly committed to preventing illegal migrant working and the misuse of our asylum system by those seeking financial advantage, rather than protection. We have significantly reduced the number of unfounded asylum claims since 2002 and increased removals of refused applicants. We have also strengthened legislation relating to employment by reforming section 8 of the Asylum and Immigration Act 1996 and by supporting my hon. Friend's initiative on gangmaster licensing. We are introducing new measures for a civil penalty regime and a tougher criminal offence for employers in the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill.

Jim Sheridan: My hon. Friend is aware that, when asylum seekers are caught working illegally in this country, they are dealt with accordingly. What sentences are in place to deal with unscrupulous employers who lure asylum seeker workers into the country on the false pretence of improving their quality of life?

Tony McNulty: My hon. Friend raises a fair point. If we are being honest, section 8 of the Asylum and Immigration Act 1996 has not dealt with the issue from the employer point of view as successfully as was anticipated. Where it has been successful, that has often been in areas other than under section 8, which is why we considering strengthening the legislation. Last year, when I launched a migrant workers strategy and a statement with the TUC and CBI, both sides were in agreement that it was in nobody's interest to facilitate the arrival or employment of migrants illegally—asylum seekers or otherwise—and that we all need to work to secure a transparent managed migration system, and bear down as heavily as we can on those who employ people illegally, as well as on people who are in the country illegally.

Philip Davies: The Minister concentrates his fire on employers, but does he agree that, if asylum seekers were detained while their applications were being processed rather than dispersed around the country, and if more failed asylum seekers were kicked out of the country, there would be fewer asylum seekers working?

Tony McNulty: In the context of the question and everything else that I have read and heard of the hon. Gentleman, no, I do not agree with him.

Peter Soulsby: Does my hon. Friend agree that, whether working or not, it is vital that vulnerable asylum seekers receive high-quality advice to prevent exploitation and will he therefore agree to examine the plight of the Leicester refugee and asylum advice project, which faces closure despite providing an invaluable specialist service to vulnerable and often desperate clients?

Tony McNulty: I do not know the details of the specific case in Leicester to which my hon. Friend refers, but I agree with his general point. We are working closely with the Legal Services Commission as we implement our new asylum model to try to ensure that there is input from legal advisers at the pre-decision level. The greater the integrity of the initial decision on an asylum application, the better will that ripple through the system. I agree with the broad point, but cannot comment on the specifics.

David Davies: Does the Minister agree that genuine asylum seekers coming here from their country of origin in fear of their lives would not jeopardise their status by deliberately breaking the rules set for them and does he therefore agree that those who are found to be working in this country should have their asylum status cancelled and treated accordingly?

Tony McNulty: I do not agree with what I think was the broad thrust of that question. Suffice it to say that the hon. Gentleman speaks only mildly better gibberish than his namesake.

Neighbourhood Policing

Huw Irranca-Davies: If he will make a statement on the roll-out of the neighbourhood policing model.

Charles Clarke: I am glad that it is warming up, Mr. Speaker.
	We will ensure that, by 2008, every part of the country will have a dedicated, visible, accessible and responsive neighbourhood policing team. There will be a neighbourhood policing team in every area, covering, typically, one or two council wards, in which every resident will know the name of their local police officer, see them on the street and have their phone number and e-mail address.

Huw Irranca-Davies: I apologise to the House for my slightly hoarse voice, the result of cheering on the Welsh team in a fantastic match at the weekend. Even though the Scottish team was one man down, it was a brilliant match. On the subject of being one man down, does my right hon. Friend acknowledge that one of the greatest disadvantages to community policing is when police are pulled away from their duties in the community and that neighbourhood policing models will ensure that those police are embedded much more firmly in the communities that they serve?

Charles Clarke: My hon. Friend is correct, except perhaps in the rugby team that he supports. It is critical to deal with so-called abstractions from neighbourhood police teams, whether for operations, as he describes, or for some training functions, and one reason why we are reorganising the strategic level of policing is to strengthen neighbourhood policing.

Derek Conway: Will the Home Secretary accept that these schemes in the borough of Bexley are so far working well, although we would like them in Blackfen and Lamorbey as well? Will he take on board the fact that there is a serious problem with the existing teams when the officers are taken away for other duties? When the scheme was introduced, we were assured that that would not happen, but certainly in the Metropolitan police area it is happening.

Charles Clarke: I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman's support for the policy and glad to pay tribute to the Metropolitan police, who have led the development of the policy throughout the country, with its ambition of securing neighbourhood policing in every part of London by spring next year. I am sure that the House will understand that, over the past months, there have been serious public order issues in London that have led to what the hon. Gentleman described, but the Metropolitan police are trying to address those issues.

Crime Prevention

Kerry McCarthy: What steps he is taking to reduce offending; and if he will make a statement.

Fiona Mactaggart: My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary published a five-year strategy for protecting the public and reducing reoffending on 9 February. That will be delivered through strong partnerships. Its key aspects are a named offender manager for every offender, expansion of community sentences, full use of a range of rehabilitations and a genuine aspiration to going straight for every individual with a contract based on strong future prospects of employment, housing and social and family relations.

Kerry McCarthy: I recently visited HMP Ashfield near my constituency. I was concerned when I met some 17-year-old lads there to discover that they were due for release in a couple of weeks and that, as yet, the prison authorities have not arranged any accommodation for them to go to on their release. I was even more concerned to hear that there is an 82 per cent. reoffending rate at the institution. Does my hon. Friend agree that there is a direct correlation between those two points and can she assure me that the Government's new plans will address that?

Fiona Mactaggart: My hon. Friend is right about the direct correlation, which is a point that the strategy that we published last week clearly emphasises. She is also right to highlight the current difficulties, but she will be reassured by the fact that, in the first half of this financial year, the number of prisoners with accommodation on release rose by 11 per cent., and we are taking action to ensure that that rise continues.

John Hemming: Does the Minister agree that a problem has arisen because of the lack of research on offending and recidivism in relation to cautions? Reports in Birmingham indicating that somebody is allowed to shop lift once a year without fear of prosecution should create concern.

Fiona Mactaggart: Any reports suggesting than an offender can get away with it with impunity will create concern on both sides of the House.

Antisocial Behaviour Orders

Chris Bryant: How many antisocial behaviour orders have been issued in Wales.

Andy Burnham: The latest figures, as reported to the Home Office by the Courts Service, show that 270 ASBOs have been issued in Wales up to 30 June 2005.

Chris Bryant: It is good to know that some ASBOs have been issued in Wales. May I convey to my hon. Friend the frustration felt by many of my constituents when either an individual or a family is clearly ruining the peaceful nature of a village, yet, out of some kind of misguided liberalism, sometimes the police and often social workers and others, refuse to engage with the ASBO process?

Andy Burnham: ASBOs have been a great success and of the 270 ASBOs issued in Wales, 15 have been issued in Rhondda. I understand my hon. Friend's frustration, but the powers are being used in his constituency, and I am sure that his constituents appreciate that. He is right that those powers can have a great effect on the ground and the onus is on local authorities everywhere to see how they can make greater use of them. I am sure that there are grounds in Wales for the greater use of the powers that we have introduced.

Prisons

James Duddridge: What assessment he has made of the standard of segregation units in prisons.

Fiona Mactaggart: Segregation units in both private and public sector prisons are subject to external inspections by Her Majesty's chief inspector of prisons and audits by the Prison Service standards audit unit on a three-year rolling programme. Prisons are also expected to carry out their own regular internal self-audit procedures. In addition, the independent monitoring board at each establishment undertakes weekly visits.

James Duddridge: My constituent, Pauline Day, has raised a number of questions about the death of her son, Paul Day, in a segregation unit. Paul's suicide led to perhaps the longest inquiry into a death in custody, and with your permission, Mr. Speaker, I shall seek to secure an Adjournment debate on that issue. I have given the Minister notice that I should like her to name the individual who authorised, as opposed to organised, the transfer of Paul Day from Wandsworth prison to Frankland prison.

Fiona Mactaggart: The transfer of Paul Day was brokered by the prison and authorised by the directorate of high security prisons operations unit. Since that date, there have been substantial changes to the way in which such transfers are arranged. A Prison Service order issued in July 2005 that sets out the principles for maintaining order in prisons makes it clear that disruptive individuals must be individually case managed and that, where transfer to another establishment is appropriate, the reasons must be properly documented and accompany the prisoner. All transfers are to be on a permanent basis, and they must be approved at management level.

Gateway Protection Programme

Diana Johnson: What progress has been made on the gateway protection programme; and if he will make a statement.

Andy Burnham: The gateway protection programme is a humanitarian programme that has been set up in partnership with the United Nations to re-house some of the world's most vulnerable refugees in the United Kingdom. So far, we have resettled 285 refugees to the UK and our target is to settle 500 refugees a year under the programme. I want to put on record my thanks to Hull for becoming the sixth local authority to take part in the programme.

Diana Johnson: I welcome the gateway protection programme. Will the Minister say something about how it will fit in with local community cohesion strategies in areas such as Hull?

Andy Burnham: It can play an important part in local community cohesion. The early evidence from areas in which authorities have participated in the programme shows that it has been successful in challenging some of the attacks on the notion of political asylum that we have heard in recent years. In Bolton and Sheffield in particular, the towns have rallied around the individuals who have come to them. The programme has been a positive experience for the receiving community and, of course, for the vulnerable individuals who have benefited from the protection that those towns have offered. I expect that the same will be true when refugees come to Hull under the programme.

Police Restructuring

Philip Dunne: To whom basic command unit commanders will be accountable under the plans for police force restructuring.

Hazel Blears: BCU commanders will continue to be directly accountable to their chief constables within the new force structures. They will also, as now, be publicly answerable to the communities that they serve. The roll-out of neighbourhood policing teams by 2008 and the steps that we are taking to improve the effectiveness of crime and disorder reduction partnerships will significantly enhance the responsiveness of the police and their partners in addressing local priorities for tackling crime and antisocial behaviour.

Philip Dunne: In deciding to coerce West Mercia police into a regional force for the west midlands, against the wishes of local public bodies, members of the public and police professionals, what consideration has the Minister given to the practical implications for local policing of the chief constable having to manage 30 BCU commanders instead of six?

Hazel Blears: The hon. Gentleman and his colleagues will know that the purpose of moving towards larger, more strategic forces is to improve the quality of policing. The Government made a manifesto commitment to provide a neighbourhood policing team in every community in England and Wales. That means that local people will be able to set priorities and have a real influence on the standards of local policing in their communities. West Mercia, like a range of other forces, will continue to have extremely high-quality neighbourhood policing in which local police officers reflect the priorities of local people.

NEW MEMBER

The following Member took and subscribed the Oath:
	Willie Rennie, for Dunfermline and West Fife

Points of Order

Eric Forth: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. If, like me, you are an avid reader of The Mail on Sunday, you will have been as shocked as me to read the revelation yesterday by a Labour party apparatchik, who mentioned
	"the parliamentary postage allowance, which meant the taxpayer picked up the bill."
	He was referring to routine mass mailings by the Labour   party at the taxpayer's expense through the parliamentary allowance. He continued:
	"It was naughty, since this allowance was intended only for Parliamentary rather than party political business, but we did it all the time."
	I seek your guidance, Mr. Speaker. You know that we can refer individual cases of abuse of the parliamentary postage allowance to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, but what can we do about systematic abuse of that allowance by the Labour party and its officials? It is a disgrace, which must be tackled immediately.

Mr. Speaker: I am interested in the fact that the right hon. Gentleman raised the matter because I asked the Administration Committee to look into it so that it could come back to the House of Commons Commission. The right hon. Gentleman is a member of that Committee and I understand that it is an item on the agenda for tomorrow. He has my permission to say to the Administration Committee that the Speaker is waiting patiently for the report.

International Development (Reporting and Transparency) Bill [Money]

Queen's recommendation having been signified—

Gareth Thomas: I beg to move,
	That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the International Development (Reporting and Transparency) Bill, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of—
	(1) any expenditure incurred by the Secretary of State in consequence of the Act;
	and
	(2) any increase attributable to the Act in the sums payable out of money so provided under any other Act.
	I was delighted that the measure, which was promoted as a private Member's Bill by my right hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr. Clarke) was granted an unopposed Second Reading by the House on 20 January. The money resolution was tabled on 23 January. It is likely to have some expenditure implications for the public purse, which relate to Department for International Development staff and non-staff costs that are needed to complete new policy work on implementing the new work that the Bill requires, and to prepare an annual report to Parliament. No provision is included for the costs of implementation by other Departments as they are considered minimal.
	The Bill aims to increase transparency in the provision, reporting and use of aid and to promote coherence in Government policies on international development. To that end, it requires my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to make an annual report to Parliament containing a series of quantitative and qualitative assessments.
	The Bill requires extensive reporting on UK development assistance provided both directly to developing country partners and indirectly through multilateral agencies. Data on bilateral aid will be broken down by region and by sector, and data on multilateral aid will be broken down according to the groups of multilateral agencies through which the UK contributes. The report will specify the proportions of aid that go to low-income countries. It will also include data on the debt relief that the United Kingdom provides to developing countries.
	The Bill specifically deals with tracking the UK's progress towards the United Nations target for expenditure on official development assistance—ODA—to constitute 0.7 per cent. of gross national income. Much of the financial information that the Bill requires is already reported voluntarily. However, to fulfil the Bill's detailed requirements, the Department would need to develop new financial and management information systems that are capable of producing data, disaggregated to the level of detail that the measure requires. That would require respecification of the management information systems that are currently under design in the Department and incur additional costs.
	The Bill as drafted would require the Department to prepare regulations prescribing definitions for the terms contained in it. In terms of qualitative assessments, the Bill will, in the first instance, require my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to assess the coherence of UK Government policies on poverty reduction and sustainable development.
	The Bill also requires an assessment of the UK contribution towards achieving the UN millennium development goals.

David Davies: Will the Bill explain why some Department officials can travel first class rather than business class, at great expense? Why have they managed to ratchet up £9 million of travel expenses? Why can they travel in great luxury, in a way that not even Members of Parliament can do?

Mr. Speaker: Order. We are going a little wide of the motion.

Gareth Thomas: I invite the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T.C. Davies) to take part in our consideration of the Bill on Report. I do not remember him taking part in the debate on Second Reading—more is the pity.
	The Bill will require assessments of the effectiveness of British aid, and that, when necessary, revisions should be made to information included in previous annual reports. This will require an additional validation exercise to be carried out each year on the information in the previous year's reports.

William Cash: Will the Minister bear in mind my past remarks about the necessity for external audit if the internal public accounts committees of the member states in question are not prepared to do the job properly?

Gareth Thomas: I will of course bear in mind the comments that the hon. Gentleman has made, both in relation to his own 10-minute Bill on the subject and in exchanges that he and I have had in the House on other occasions. I hope that, in turn, he will bear in mind my responses, in which I highlighted the full range of auditing opportunities that exist for British development assistance and for improvements in the Government systems that benefit from the aid that we give. I shall turn now to the part of the Bill in which I know that the hon. Gentleman takes a particular interest.
	The last part of the Bill requires an assessment of the UK's contribution to promoting transparency in the provision and use of aid. As I mentioned on Second Reading, the Government agree with the thrust of the clause on transparency, but we believe that, as drafted, it is over-prescriptive. As drafted, the Bill requires the Department to undertake new work negotiating formal bilateral agreements with all countries to which the UK provides aid—some 130 in 2004–05—and to commission and publish independent monitoring and evaluation reports recording the development objectives achieved by those countries.

David Taylor: Significant concerns have been raised recently about the delays in distribution associated with some of DFID's activities following the tsunami disaster and the Pakistan earthquake. Will the Minister tell us whether the proposed reporting structure will be sufficiently flexible to deal with these massive and wholly unpredictable one-off events, so that we can judge DFID's effectiveness in responding to them?

Gareth Thomas: The issue of reporting on the effectiveness of humanitarian assistance was raised on Second Reading, and I am sure that we shall return to it in Committee as well as on Report and Third Reading. I do not accept my hon. Friend's recollection of delays in the delivery of assistance of relief or reconstruction, in response to either the tsunami or the Pakistan earthquake. Indeed, we have been praised for the speed of the delivery of our assistance in both cases.
	I recognise the importance of the Bill, and, with the expectation that amendments made to it in Committee will hold the costs to Parliament of its implementation to a minimum, I commend the motion to the House.

Mark Simmonds: As the Minister has said, this is the money resolution for the International Development (Reporting and Transparency) Bill promoted by the right hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr. Clarke). The resolution and the Bill would, if passed, require the Department for International Development to report annually, directly to Parliament and in a transparent and accountable way, on its progress towards achieving 0.7 per cent. of gross domestic product—with which we agree—and on the effectiveness of its aid programmes in alleviating poverty.
	The money resolution is concerned with authorising expenditure for those aims, and I acknowledge that this debate should not extend to the related Bill. However, I would like to place on record that the Conservatives support the general principles of the Bill, and were pleased that it was given an unopposed Second Reading. As I am sure the House is aware, the resolution lays down the maximum charge—which amendments may reduce in scope, but not extend—either of the amount of expenditure or of the area of its operation.
	We understand and hope that the Government intend substantially to amend the Bill to widen its scope and extent to include many of the provisions raised on Second Reading by Members on both sides of the House. I am pleased that this may be the case, but, as things stand, we have yet to see any Government amendments, so it is extremely difficult to know how extensive the changes might be. I am worried that the Government's delay in tabling their amendments—required by the rise of the House today in time for the Committee on Wednesday—makes it difficult not only for there to be proper scrutiny of the money resolution, but for us to table our amendments, as we expect the Bill to be greatly altered.

Eric Forth: I understand my hon. Friend's concern, but does it reassure him that, on Report at least, there will be a more than adequate opportunity to table further amendments should Members who were not on the Standing Committee wish to do so? He should not be unduly concerned about the Committee stage.

Mark Simmonds: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. He took part in the Second Reading debate, and he takes an extreme and consistent interest in these matters. I look forward to his contributions on Report.
	This debate is vital. The Government are considering extending the Bill to include a provision allowing the effectiveness of British bilateral aid spending to be assessed in more than just the 10 largest recipient countries as specified in the Bill, and possibly doubling the number. As I am sure all Members will agree, the money resolution would greatly strengthen the assessment of aid effectiveness. It would ensure accountability for more than just 44.2 per cent. of bilateral aid spending and would include countries such as Mozambique and Kenya—which are currently excluded—as recent allegations demonstrate the necessity for increased accountability and transparency. Such an amendment may involve a corresponding increase in costs, which may or may not be covered by the resolution. Similarly, a proposal to increase the Bill's scope to include humanitarian aid—to which reference has already been made—could have a varying impact on its financial implications, particularly as the number and extent of humanitarian aid programmes are unpredictable.
	I hope and trust that the resolution will authorise general expenditure resulting from the Bill, probably covering issues that I and others have raised, such as independent monitoring and assessment criteria relating to the millennium development goals. However, I think it is still important to consider how such expenditure may arise, and the nature of any proposed amendments is therefore of great importance.
	While I understand the generic nature of the money resolution, the Minister said that he had an idea of the maximum charge that must not be extended. Can he also tell us whether he expects the estimate for future financial years to be the same as the first-year estimates? Are the costs front-loaded, or will they increase over time as the aid budget grows exponentially towards 0.7 per cent. of gross domestic product? The Minister spoke of plans for expenditure covering only three years. Why should that be the case, given that the 0.7 per cent. will not be reached until 2013, seven years from now? Can the Minister assure us that the cost of the Bill will be financed by the reduction in leakage that its implementation will facilitate, and will not have a negative impact on poverty alleviation?
	As it stands, the motion will not prevent any amendments tabled after Second Reading from being discussed in Committee. However, it would have been useful if the Minister had tabled Government amendments earlier, so that their possible implications could have been discussed during this debate.
	Neither the Minister nor any other Member may amend the motion. That preserves its generic nature, and the guarantee that it covers all eventualities. If it has to be altered, the original version must be withdrawn and resubmitted with its scope extended. Such action would hinder the Bill's progress, and Conservative Members do not want that. I trust that the Minister will confirm that there are no circumstances in which such an eventuality would arise.
	Conservative Members support the Bill's general principles and therefore, along with the Minister, commend the motion to the House.

Philip Hollobone: Given the importance that the Government attach to the Bill's passage, what consideration have they given to speeding up the process by providing Government time rather than private Members' time on Fridays?

Eric Forth: This motion illustrates all too well the weaknesses of the money resolution process, as both the Minister and my hon. Friend the Member for Boston and Skegness (Mark Simmonds) have illustrated rather well. As is so often the case, the House is being asked to endorse what amounts to a blank cheque. That would be bad enough in the best of circumstances, but in the case of this Bill it is particularly egregious.
	The money resolution states that
	"it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of . . . any expenditure incurred by the Secretary of State in consequence of the Act; and . . . any increase attributable to the Act in the sums payable out of money so provided".
	If that is not a blank cheque, I do not know what is. Because we normally know from a given Bill's Second Reading its parameters and detailed provisions, we can make a rough estimate of such expenditure; indeed, I seem to recall that on certain very rare occasions, Ministers have been kind enough to give the House some idea of the expenditure involved. However, this is a different case altogether.
	As has already been reflected in the contributions made so far, this Bill, unusually—if I may quote myself, which I am usually very pleased to do—does at the same time
	"too much and too little."—[Official Report, 20 January 2006; Vol. 441, c. 1114.]
	At one and the same time, it contains too many provisions—a point commented on by the Minister and criticised by my hon. Friend the Member for Boston and Skegness—and too few. Indeed, many contributions on Second Reading suggested, very positively and helpfully, provisions that could be included in it.
	All these issues will have financial ramifications. We are in the absurd position of being asked by the Government to approve a money resolution for a Bill that we know will be amended, both in Committee and on Report, by Ministers and, I hope, by other Members of the House when we are given an opportunity to do so. How can we possibly, on behalf of our taxpayers, sign up to the incurring of "any expenditure" by the Secretary of State in respect of a Bill whose provisions we know will be radically altered by both the Government and the House at large?
	This surely is an absurdity and we should not be prepared to accept it. I shall therefore be very reluctant to give my support to such a money resolution, but I should point out that I am looking forward enormously to considering the Bill on Report. It is substantial, containing many clauses, and we know from Second Reading that the House will want to debate many aspects of it, probably at length, and to vote on it, probably repeatedly, in order to ensure that it is absolutely right and achieves the objectives set out for it. So although the money resolution is unfortunate, misdirected, mistimed and wrong, I hope that we can correct all that in Committee and on Report.

Gareth Thomas: With your leave, Mr. Speaker, I shall reply briefly to one or two of the points that have been made. The hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Mark Simmonds) may now be aware that Government amendments and amendments from my right hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr. Clarke) are being tabled as we speak. I recognise that Members like to have early sight of Government amendments; nevertheless, all will want the Government to take time to get them right. I hope that Opposition Members—and, indeed, Government Members—will appreciate the amendments that are being tabled.
	The hon. Member for Boston and Skegness asked about the distribution of expenditure and whether some will be front-loaded. Some investment in new systems will indeed be required, so some front-loading will be necessary. He also asked why a three-year period is specified, given that it will take seven years to reach the 0.7 per cent. target. The three-year period relates to the comprehensive spending review period. We will not necessarily be able to speed up progress toward the 0.7 per cent. target; it would take the international finance facility to do that. If the hon. Gentleman is aware of any leakage, I hope that he will inform us of it, so that we can take action to correct it. I can reassure him that I foresee no scenario in which we will have to withdraw the money resolution.
	The hon. Member for Kettering (Mr. Hollobone) asked whether Government time and other assistance might be needed to speed up the Bill's passage. Given that it has the support of Front Benchers in all parts of the House, there should be no circumstances in which Government time is needed to progress the Bill. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman could seek reassurance from the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) that he agrees with that assessment.
	The right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst asked for more information on the distribution of costs. The regulatory impact assessment was, I believe, made available in the Library last week, and it provides some clarity on how the costs are set out.
	Question put and agreed to.

Identity Cards Bill (Programme) (No. 4)

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 83A(6) (Programme motions),
	That the following provisions shall apply to the Identity Cards Bill for the purpose of supplementing the Orders of 28th June, 12th July and 18th October 2005 (Identity Cards Bill (Programme), Identity Cards Bill (Programme) (No. 2) and Identity Cards Bill (Programme) (No. 3)).
	Consideration of Lords Amendments
	1.   Proceedings on consideration of Lords Amendments shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the moment of interruption at this day's sitting.
	2.   The proceedings shall be taken in the order shown in the first column of the following Table.
	3.   Each part of those proceedings shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the times specified in the second column of the table.
	
		TABLE
		
			  
			 Lords Amendments Time for conclusion of proceedings 
			 Nos. 19 to 21 and 23 One and a half hours after the commencement of proceedings on consideration of Lords Amendments. 
			 Nos. 16 and 22 One and a half hours after the commencement of the proceedings on consideration of Lords Amendments Nos. 16 and 22 or at the moment of interruption, whichever is the earlier. 
			 Nos. 1, 68 to 70, 4, 47, 48, 50, 51, 3, 2, 5 to 15, 17, 18, 24 to 46, 49, 52 to 67, 71 and 72 The moment of interruption. 
		
	
	Subsequent stages
	4.   Any further Message from the Lords may be considered forthwith without any Question being put.
	5.   The proceedings on any further Message from the Lords shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a  conclusion one hour after their commencement— [Joan Ryan.]
	Question agreed to.

Orders of the Day
	 — 
	Identity Cards Bill

Lords amendments considered.

Clause 6
	 — 
	Power of the Secretary of State to require registration

Lords amendment: No. 19, leave out clause 6.

Tony McNulty: I beg to move, That this House agrees with the Lords in the said amendment.

Mr. Speaker: With this it will be convenient to take Lords amendment No. 20, Lords amendment No. 21, Government motion to disagree thereto, Government amendment (a) in lieu thereof and Lords amendment No. 23.

Tony McNulty: The Government have decided not to seek to reverse Lords amendments Nos. 19 and 20, which removed clauses 6 and 7 on the procedure for introducing compulsory registration. The clauses dealt with the requirement to register and be issued with an identity card in the second stage of the identity card scheme and for compulsion to be brought into effect by way of secondary legislation made under this Bill and subject to the super-affirmative procedure. We agree that those provisions should be dropped.
	It is worth dwelling on the background to the issues. The Home Affairs Committee, in its fourth report of 2003–04, said:
	"The move to compulsion is a step of such importance that it should only be taken after the scrutiny afforded by primary legislation: the proposed 'super-affirmative procedure' is not adequate."
	We decided from the beginning that there is substance to the Committee's point: it is a sufficiently important step from the first stage to the second stage and compulsion to require a vote in both Houses. In the early stages, we decided that the super-affirmative procedure should apply, but many—not least the House of Lords—disagreed, and that is the territory covered by the amendments.

Simon Hughes: The Minister knows that my colleagues and I oppose compulsory identity cards. Is it now the Government's view that a voluntary scheme would be acceptable and justified if there was no later agreement for a compulsory scheme? Is it still the Government's view that a scheme with a card that people do not have to carry will ever work?

Tony McNulty: On the first point, no. We have made it clear from the beginning that the ultimate aim for the programme was compulsory registration. The answer to his second question is also no. We have always said that the most important element of the programme was the database that stands behind the card. In that context, the scheme that we have devised, which does not involve compulsory carrying of the card, is entirely right and proper.

Edward Garnier: My intervention might be a little premature, because the Minister has hardly had the chance to get to the end of the first paragraph of his remarks. I am grateful to the Government for not seeking to reverse the Lords amendments on the deletion of clauses 6 and 7, but I need to be sure of the limit to their agreement. The Government accept that primary legislation will be required to introduce compulsion, but there will be compulsion through the back door under clauses 4 and 5 and designated documents. Can the Minister state explicitly that it will still be a compulsory requirement to provide information to the national identity register in relation to designated documents—a concept that has so far been undefined, save in relation to passports and immigration or travel documents?

Tony McNulty: I can certainly give the hon. and learned Gentleman that explicit assurance, but it would tempt the House's patience if I travelled too far down the road he suggests, as it forms the substance of the next group of amendments. In a moment, I shall clarify what we have done to agree with their lordships.

David Howarth: Does the phrase in the Government's amendment,
	"an obligation imposed by an Act of Parliament passed after the passing of this Act",
	include an order made under the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill, should it become law? It will be enacted after the Identity Cards Bill, so if that phrase is included the Minister's assurance will be worthless.

Tony McNulty: I shall return to that point when I get to the second and third paragraphs of my comments.

Jim Cunningham: I have two questions. First, we are saying at this stage that the scheme will not be compulsory, but as people are being asked for some form of identification at airports, could airport authorities insist on the production of an ID card? Secondly, will my hon. Friend comment on suggestions in the press at the weekend that motorists will need an ID card when they reapply for their driving licence?

Tony McNulty: The Sunday press always affects Ministers' blood pressure, but I have never read such an absurd and inaccurate story as the one about driving licences. When I was part of the Department for Transport, we made it clear long before, and during, proceedings on the Road Safety Bill—which I thoroughly enjoyed—that all paper licences, which are the most inappropriate and insecure form of such an important document, would need to be replaced by small plastic photocard licences. I can say without fear of contradiction that that is entirely separate from—indeed, nothing to do with—what we want to do in the ID cards programme.
	When we implement the ID card scheme on a voluntary basis, it will in the first instance—except for provisions made in the Bill—be for individual private operators to determine what they need for the fulfilment of a transaction involving their services. It is not for the Government to set parameters at each and every turn for private transactions.

Stewart Hosie: If the Minister is correct and an ID card will not be required to obtain a driving licence, why does the Government's figure of £1.7 billion of identity fraud include the costs of such crime for the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency? If ID cards are meant to solve such fraud, surely the hon. Member for Coventry, South (Mr. Cunningham) is right and an ID card would be required to obtain a driving licence.

Tony McNulty: No, with respect to the hon. Gentleman, my hon. Friend's comments related to a fatuous piece in one of the Sunday papers, which referred to a clause in the Road Safety Bill about the recall of paper licences and the issue of more secure and substantial licences. We have made it clear that we shall look only at passports and immigration documents in the implementation of the first phase of ID cards. We have never excluded from subsequent consideration documents such as driving licences, but the hon. Gentleman's point relates neither to the story to which my hon. Friend referred nor to reality.

Simon Hughes: My question is germane to both this and the next group of amendments. International obligations for biometric tests in the reading of passports will be imposed on Britain, but does the Minister accept that it would be entirely possible for us to comply with those obligations without requiring additional information to be held on a passport or other document? Our international obligations are thus not a reason for the Government's policy on identity cards.

Tony McNulty: I accept that, but I would qualify it in part by saying that that is the initial position and the start of a trend in international obligations. In strict terms, on whether we are going beyond the minimum standards that are required at this stage and that are likely to be needed in the very near future, the hon. Gentleman is entirely right, but why should we go for something substandard or second rate, or that is likely to be second rate within five or 10 years? In essence, he is, of course, entirely right.

William Cash: Will the Minister enlighten the House about whether he has discussed these clauses and amendments with the Information Commissioner, who pretty well condemned the procedures that were outlined on Second Reading, as I stated at the time? Will he explain why the reference to "compulsory registration" has not been removed from clause 9?

Tony McNulty: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for those questions, which lead me neatly into the second paragraph of my opening speech, in which I want to go into the substance of the choreography or jigsaw, which also refers to the point made by the hon. Member for Cambridge (David Howarth). It is very clear from the debate in the other place that their lordships would prefer us to go down the primary legislation route, rather than the super-affirmative route. That is what they seek to achieve in the amendments that they have offered to the House. The removal of clauses 6 and 7 goes part way to achieving that, but to go all the way to achieving that we need to   include our proposal in lieu of Lords amendment No. 21.
	The hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Cash) is entirely right: what their lordships chose not to do and what we are not doing in response to them is to eradicate every element or reference to compulsion in the Bill. In essence, all the building blocks for compulsion in the Bill remain. He will know from the debate on Second Reading and the other Commons stages that a number of elements in the Bill refer to the compulsion stage, rather than to the run up to that stage. Given the wording of our proposal in lieu of the Lords amendment, none of the buildings blocks for compulsion that remain can be enacted until the subsequent primary legislation has been passed. That more neatly achieves precisely what their lordships required in respect of the balance between super-affirmative and primary legislation, as is shown in the reports of their debates.
	An order under the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill, however, will not be an Act of Parliament, so the hon. Gentleman is wrong to suggest that anything other than primary legislation could be used as the vehicle, given the wording that we offer. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Cambridge keeps chuntering. I shall, of course, give way to him, but in my own time and on my own terms.

William Cash: The Minister refers to building blocks in respect of the inner parts of the Bill. He might recall that, in addressing my remarks to the Home Secretary on Second Reading, I demonstrated the relationship between the Bill, what the Information Commissioner had to say and what I thought George Orwell would have made of the provisions on the building blocks of compulsion. I do not see any change in substance or principle. Does the Minister accept that the building blocks are those of George Orwell's Ministry of Truth?

Tony McNulty: I certainly do not accept the latter point, although George Orwell—also known as Mr. Blair—is one of my favourite authors, so I am with the hon. Gentleman at that level. [Interruption.] Eric Blair, I think hon. Members will find. However, the hon. Gentleman's general point that the key elements of the   secondary phase—that is, compulsion—remain in the Bill is entirely fair. The point that he makes within the confines of the debate and these Lords amendments is entirely right: none of them goes to the substance or principle of voluntary, compulsory or any other form of ID card scheme. The debate is only on the narrow ground of whether there should be a super-affirmative procedure in both Houses or primary legislation. I think that everyone at both ends of this place accepts the premise that the step-up to compulsion is of sufficient seriousness to demand a vote in both Houses. We are discussing the technique and process rather than the substance.

David Howarth: I hear what the Minister says but the problem is that amendment (a) in lieu of amendment No. 21 refers to
	"an obligation imposed by an Act of Parliament passed after the passing of this Act."
	The Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill will be such an Act of Parliament and it will be passed after this Act. The Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill will give Ministers the power to amend any Act by order, so I cannot see any way in which an order under that Act can be excluded under this drafting of the amendment.

Tony McNulty: I assure the hon. Gentleman that his interpretation is not accurate. If I need to discuss that with him in greater detail over a cup of tea, I will be happy to do so, albeit probably not today—let us say about Thursday.
	I emphasise that the substance of the debate is on the narrow terms of whether super-affirmative is the appropriate procedure for there to be, as we all agree, a vote in both Houses as a prelude to compulsion or whether we should go back to primary legislation. I referred to the Home Affairs Committee and its report that said that it would prefer primary legislation and that the super-affirmative procedure was not adequate. The House of Lords Constitution Committee, in paragraph 9 of its third report in 2005–06, equally concluded that
	"it would be preferable to separate the two phases in order that the compulsory phase would have to be introduced by primary legislation. This would enable Parliament to ensure that the legislation fully reflected experience gained, especially about safeguards, during the voluntary phase."
	We have said on a number of occasions that this is not just about flicking the switch. There has to be a substantive view prior to flicking that switch.

Ben Wallace: The Minister has clearly attached a new-found importance to an Act of Parliament to make compulsory the requirement for registration. Why did he not consider extending that importance to designated documents, which he currently proposes to do through an order? Perhaps that could also be done through the new Act of Parliament.

Tony McNulty: I am tempted to go to our next debate,   but I shall resist that temptation before you, Mr. Speaker, exhort me to shut up, move on and stay with the specifics.
	The hon. Gentleman, who was on the Standing Committee considering the Bill, is aware of two points. First, as we shall see when we come to the next debate, it is inconceivable that people who have concerns about cost-effectiveness should say to the House that we should ignore the data needed for biometric passports and instead separately introduce additional but identical paraphernalia for ID cards.
	The hon. Gentleman will also know that I am not a recent convert. I referred to the super-affirmative procedure in Standing Committee—I am sure he was there; he attended assiduously—and said:
	"As people will know, the genesis of the provisions is the fact that we regard compulsion to register as the end goal. We regard the step from voluntary to compulsory as a serious one. That is why we sought to put in the Bill a scrutiny process that would allow the House proper time to scrutinise these matters carefully, with due diligence."
	In response to the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Carmichael), I added:
	"One interpretation . . . is that the super-affirmative procedure could be seen as a rather crude algorithmic loop, in which something starts here, goes there, and modified or otherwise, comes back."
	We end up in a lock from which there is no escape route.
	"If it does not get to where it was headed, it starts again, with no apparent escape from that scrutiny loop. That is an entirely fair point."
	I was feeling in a generous mood even then. I continued:
	"We put that down the last time the Bill was determined to be helpful to the House in terms of scrutiny. I assure the Committee that we shall take back and consider those comments, albeit with the clause intact"—
	that is, passed by the Committee—
	"because that is how these things work."—[Official Report, Standing Committee D, 12 July 2005; c. 219.]
	We decided, in our wisdom, that we were reasonably comfortable with the super-affirmative procedure. Many hon. Members and, indeed, Members of the other place, advanced substantive arguments for the alternative of primary legislation, and we have now succumbed to that will.

Clare Short: I was not a member of the Committee, so I ask this question for genuine clarification. What is wrong with the scheme is the register, because if we had biometrics and voluntary identity cards, it would be acceptable. If we accept the Government amendment, will some people still be compelled to be on the register because they have applied for a passport?

Tony McNulty: I say in all candour that the answer is yes. Nothing in the provisions would change the way in which the first part of the process would unfold regarding its implementation for passports.

Neil Gerrard: Will the Minister clarify a matter—we need to get this absolutely straight—about clause 15, which will allow public services to be conditional on identity checks? The measure would apply if an individual was subject to compulsory registration. If the Government amendment is accepted, will that measure not come into effect until after the subsequent primary legislation has been passed?

Tony McNulty: I can give my hon. Friend an absolute assurance about that. The measure is one of the building blocks in the Bill to which the hon. Member for Stone referred. I assure my hon. Friend that it will not be switched on or enacted until the second piece of primary legislation has been passed to bring in compulsion.
	We said several times that although the super-affirmative procedure applies to the new procedure, before a move to compulsion takes place we and the House will want to be satisfied that implementation of the initial phase of the identity card scheme has achieved significant coverage of the population so that compulsion would have an impact on only the relatively small number of people who had yet to register for and obtain an identity card. We would also want to be satisfied that there continued to be clear support for identity cards, that no vulnerable group would be disadvantaged, that the scheme had contributed to meeting the aims outlined in clause 1, and that the technology supporting the identity card scheme was working and trusted. All those matters will be reviewed before the introduction of primary legislation to flick on the switch for compulsion. If we go down the road suggested on costs, which we will address later, the six-monthly report to the House that accompanies the review will take us to a point at which we will have all the information that we require when we consider primary legislation on compulsion.

Simon Hughes: The Minister clearly gave us a list to indicate how the conditions for moving to compulsion would be met. What is his estimate of the approximate percentage of the adult public with identity cards that would be sufficient to justify moving towards compulsion?

Tony McNulty: The hon. Gentleman makes an entirely fair point that we will have to consider seriously as we move towards flicking the switch for compulsion through primary legislation. I suggest that there will be plenty of time to discuss that, but I said quite deliberately that compulsion would have an impact on only the relatively small number of people who had not registered for and obtained a card. I suggest that the proportion would be considerably more than half the eligible population, but the House will have plenty of time to discuss such detailed matters as we get closer to that time.

Jim Cunningham: There has been a lot of speculation about charges for ID cards. Can my hon. Friend give us any idea of the likely cost of a card to an ordinary member of the public who wants one?

Tony McNulty: I repeat the assurances that we have already given on several occasions. The stand-alone ID card will cost about £30 and the joint package with the biometric passport will cost about £93. My hon. Friend will know, too, that specific secondary legislation will remain in the Bill relating to the fees regime and any concessionary regime, which the House will have an opportunity to discuss.
	We accept in spirit the direction in which the Lords want us to travel, but we cannot in substance and detail accept exactly the form of words proposed, for the reasons that I have outlined. I therefore commend the amendment in lieu to the House.

Michael Mates: On costs, if identity cards are eventually to become compulsory, what is the argument for making them so for a citizen who does not need to travel abroad and does not want a passport? Why should he have to pay for what the Government are going to make him do?

Tony McNulty: First, we are not making the cards themselves compulsory—it is the registration that will be compulsory. Secondly, we are not developing ID cards in lieu of passports, as a separate travel document. We think that the benefits of ID cards go far beyond simply travel and that, in the terms that we have outlined, £30 for a 10-year document is not terribly unreasonable.

Robert Smith: Will the Minister give way?

Tony McNulty: I fear not—we only have an hour and a half on this.
	With those comments I commend to the House the motion to disagree and the Government amendment in lieu.

Mr. Speaker: I must draw the House's attention to the fact that privilege is involved in Lords amendments Nos.   1, 68, 69 and 70. If the House agrees to those amendments, I shall ensure that the appropriate entry is made in the Journal.

Edward Garnier: May I draw the House's attention to the fact that humble pie is also evident in this group of amendments? I was delighted to see the Minister eating it, although it is pity that he did not eat it in the summer, when we had our interesting discussions during the Committee stage.
	We had a lengthy debate about this very issue and at that stage the Government decided that they were prepared to introduce compulsion through secondary legislation. I see my hon. Friends the Members for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood) and for Lancaster and Wyre (Mr. Wallace), who were on the Committee with me, in their places today. We drew the issue to the Committee's attention but the Government, in their wisdom, decided that they knew best and that if they wanted to bring in compulsion—which was clearly their end intention—they would do it through secondary legislation.
	The problem facing the Government is that they have, as usual, misused the English language. When they say "voluntary", they mean "compulsory", and that is why they have got stuck. When they say "may", they mean "must" and when they say "possibly", they mean "definitely". That is why they were given a thorough ticking-off in the other place, where Members of the House of Lords—not only from the Opposition parties, but from the Government party—turned up in numbers to persuade them that their original thinking was wrong.
	I am delighted that the Minister and the Home Secretary have changed their mind. They were sensible to do so and here we are, dealing with something of a concession. However, before we get overexcited, we need to be clear about the value of the concession—how limited or extensive it is. We shall come on to designated documents in the next group of amendments, but we have already discovered from my intervention that a compulsory procedure will still be required when they are applied for. That is to say that when people apply for their passport, a residential status document or an immigration document they will still be compelled, whether they like it or not, under this Christmas tree of a Bill—which allows the Secretary of State to take unto himself 61 powers to make further law—to do things that he requires them to do. It is only in the discrete area of clauses 6 and 7 that the requirement for primary legislation bites. We are grateful for that—let me not give the Home Secretary and the Minister of State any other impression—but the problem remains that compulsion is still a big part of the Bill, which is still no more than a Christmas tree, providing various little places for this Secretary of State or his successors to add on secondary legislation giving them powers to tell us what to do.

Ben Wallace: Does my hon. and learned Friend agree that the number of people in the United Kingdom who do not have a passport, driver's licence, pension book, national insurance number, work permit or any need to access public provision is tiny? It would be compulsion by the back door.

Edward Garnier: It is my view and that of the official Opposition that it is compulsion by stealth. Only about 20 per cent. of the population do not have a passport. If the measure is implemented in 2008, only 20 per cent. of a population of broadly 60 million will be relieved of compulsion except by primary legislation. We have not seen the legislation—for goodness' sake, we have not even seen the secondary legislation that the Home Secretary wishes to apply.
	Numerically, 20 per cent. is a large number—

Tobias Ellwood: It is 12 million.

Edward Garnier: But it is a tiny number compared with the 48 million or so who will be required through compulsion, in designated documents, to enter on to the national identity register material that is private to them.

John Redwood: Is not the problem with the proposed system that the Government cannot control the current passport system? There are lots of forged passports and a good trade in them. They recently told me that they have no idea how many people are eligible to have a national insurance number, let alone what the correlation is between those who have them and those who should have them. Why should we believe that they will be any better at controlling the system if they do not have proper control of the borders and a proper policy on who is eligible to be here?

Edward Garnier: My right hon. Friend properly raises all sorts of issues, and I trust that the Government will condescend to answer them in due course. I agree with the thrust behind his question. The Government's conduct on such matters is incredible and unconvincing. One only has to look at how they handle the Home Office accounts. Not even the Comptroller and Auditor General was prepared to sign those off. Why should we give them the trust that they desire and is required if the system is to command public confidence? I agree that the Government have a long way to go.

William Cash: I do not know whether my hon. and learned Friend heard the remarks by Commissioner Frattini on "The World at One" today—[Interruption.] I am sad to hear that he did not. Commissioner Frattini implied that he was concerned that there should be one border—namely, the European Union border. In the light of the remarks by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood), perhaps my hon. and learned Friend will accept that at the heart of the problem is a view that we should have a border of Europe as a whole, as compared with those matters in respect of which passports are given—namely, access to the United Kingdom?

Edward Garnier: I am always grateful for my hon. Friend's interpretations of what Commissioner Frattini has to say. He has a slightly better link to him than I do. My hon. Friend's general point is good. Here we are, getting freedom from compulsion until the next Bill—the next piece of primary legislation—

Frank Cook: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. In view of the fact that I am partially deaf—I have impaired hearing—would you kindly advise the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) to speak into the microphone, rather than to the wall?

Mr. Speaker: I have heard the hon. Gentleman's request. Perhaps the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) can assist.

Edward Garnier: I sympathise with the complaint of the hon. Member for Stockton, North (Frank Cook), and I shall endeavour to make sure not only that he hears what I have to say but in due course that he can hear the grinding of his Government's reverse gears.
	To return briefly to the intervention of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr. Cash), who was listening with great care to Mr. Frattini at lunchtime, that issue will be wrapped up in the next debate when we discuss designated documents. The passport is a designated document, and immigration documents will be designated documents under the secondary legislation that will be introduced under clauses 4 and 5. The European travel document, which is what the identity card will eventually become, is another designated document. Mr. Frattini's point would therefore be more properly addressed in later debates. None the less, I do not wish to inhibit my hon. Friend from pursuing that argument.
	I would like to know the width and weight of the Government concession. When will we know the detail of the next piece of primary legislation? Will it be written in English, and will it be yet another piece of legislation on to which the Secretary of State, whoever he then is, can hang further secondary legislation? It is one thing to say that there will be another Bill, but it is quite another thing to introduce a Bill that says precisely what it means. The Identity Cards Bill is nearly 45 pages long, and gives the Secretary of State 61 separate powers, but we cannot divine how the Secretary of State will use the powers that he gives himself and how he will define the documents and the other instruments on which he wishes to introduce secondary legislation.

David Winnick: Obviously, I do not resent the hon. and learned Gentleman making points on behalf of the Opposition—that is what he is here for—but a moment ago he referred rather sarcastically to a reverse gear. As someone who opposed identity cards—I remain opposed to them—and who voted accordingly, I welcome the fact that the Government have accepted the Lords amendments so that primary legislation will be required before the cards become compulsory. I accept that the Opposition have the right to make their argument, but those of us who are critics of the proposal should bear in mind the fact that the Government have made a substantial concession which I, for one, very much welcome.

Edward Garnier: I agree, and I have welcomed the concession—I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman was in the Chamber when I intervened on the Minister in the early part of his speech. However, it is a 20 per cent. or partial concession. As I have said, there are still plenty of provisions in the Bill that give the Secretary of State power to compel the citizen to do something. It is right to welcome the limited concession, but we need to be very careful indeed about a Bill that essentially sets up a national identity register, which is a large Government computer into which all sorts of private information will go, and to which various Government agencies will have access. We the citizens will have no knowledge of when that information goes in, what is taken out, and to whom it is passed. Under the Bill's final provisions, we will not be allowed to see an audit trail of the information that has been accessed.

Richard Shepherd: My hon. and learned Friend's reservations about breadth and depth and what the measure amounts to are formidable ones. At this late stage in proceedings, when we are considering Lords amendments, is he suggesting that he is prepared to accept the Government motion and amendment, or are we going to oppose them as vigorously as they deserve?

Edward Garnier: I shall invite my right hon. and hon. Friends to accept the Government's word. There will come a time later this afternoon when many of the problems that my hon. Friend and I still have with the Bill can be discussed—when we come to discuss compulsion and "must" or "may" in relation to designated documents. The narrowness of the present debate permits me to accept the Government's concession, to welcome their decision to agree to what their lordships say, and, as I said to the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick), to welcome the sound of the grinding of the Government gears.
	I do not want to be unpleasant to the Government, but they should have made the concession last summer.   As I am sure the Chairman of the Select Committee, the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham), will appreciate, the concession would never have needed to be made had the Government written the Bill in English in the first placeand, when they meant compulsory, written "compulsory" in the Bill. But they did not think it was in their political or other interest to do that, so they have arrived at that decision after some delay. It is a pity that they wasted our time, but they got partly to the right answer in the end.
	The Bill is essentially about the national identity register, and I mentioned some of my concerns about that. Anything to do with identity cards is but a fig leaf. We need to concern ourselves with the practicalities of the national identity register and its implications for civil liberties, rather than allowing ourselves to be bamboozled into thinking that the Bill is simply about whether we should voluntarily or compulsorily carry an identity card. It is not just about that.
	When we are talking, as we are, about fundamentally altering the relationship between the citizen and the state, it behoves every Member of the House, Front-Bench or Back-Bench, Government or Opposition, to look carefully at the detail of the Bill and not to buy everything that the Government put wrapped up on the shop front. We need to unwrap it and see what is inside the gift the Government claim to be giving us. When we unwrap it, we will find that there is not much to attract us.

Lynne Jones: Is the hon. and learned Gentleman concerned not just about the relationship with the state, but about the potential for third parties to gain access to our identity, which is deeply worrying? The contactless chips proposed will, in effect, give out a signal that can be read by anyone with access to an antenna. In Holland, biometric identity documents have already been read. Apparently, it took two hours to decrypt the documents. We all need to worry deeply that we are being forced to carry documents and to send messages from those documents to a database with enormous potential for the theft of our identity. If somebody steals my credit card—

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Lady knows that interventions must be brief.

Edward Garnier: I think I understand the point that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Lynne Jones) was making, and she is entirely right to make it. According to the Government's commercial case, a possible 44,000 private operators will have access to the national identity register. [Interruption.] I note that the Minister disagrees. I cannot imagine why that figure is in a Government document. Perhaps he has not read it.

Stephen Pound: He wrote it.

Edward Garnier: Even worse. May I assure the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak that the point that she has made needs making constantly. The Government will not listen to it unless it is made constantly. It has taken us nine months to get the Government to change from compulsion by stealth to compulsion by direct legislation for 20 per cent. of the population, but we should not forget that there are plenty of other opportunities for the Government to mine in—perhaps I should say to eat into it like a weevil. [Interruption.] Indeed—I see a bag of weevils sitting on the Government Front Bench.

Stewart Hosie: Will the hon. and learned Gentleman give way?

Edward Garnier: I was in full weevil mode, but I will of course give way to the hon. Gentleman.

Stewart Hosie: If the Government argue that there is £1.7 billion-worth of identity fraud to be cured through identity cards, and on their own analysis they argue that so many millions are from insurance companies and the British Bankers Association, and so many billions from the Building Societies Association, how can it not be that those private concerns would have access to the data on the identity register?

Edward Garnier: That is a perfectly good question, but I doubt that the hon. Gentleman will get an answer from this Government. The sum that the Government pluck out of the sky as being lost to the economy as a result of identity fraud, which has gone up from £50 million to £1.5 billion, is misleading because it does not separate out money laundering and all sorts of other criminal activities that come under that aspect of identity fraud.
	I end where I began. I welcome the concession. It does not go far enough, but I welcome the little way that it does go. A huge tranche of this country's population will still be compelled without primary legislation to give up to the national identity register information that is private to them, and we will perhaps have further battles on that later, but meanwhile, despite the perfectly understandable concerns of my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd), I urge my right hon. and hon. Friends to welcome and accede to this Government concession. Government concessions do not come very often. It usually takes the Labour party to defeat the Government to get a concession, but today the Government have put their hands up first, and that is to be welcomed.

John Denham: I shall endeavour to restrict myself to the particular topics under discussion, although the temptation to enter into another Second Reading debate is rather large. This is a debate dominated by a high degree of irrationality, as the exchanges in the past five minutes have shown. The inability to distinguish between a system in which a private company can check the validity of an individual's identity card and access to the register, with all that that implies about access to the data, has bedevilled this really important project.
	I want both the ID card scheme and the register to succeed, because if we do not start to tackle the problems now, whether they be identity fraud for commercial reasons, how to protect the employment rights of low-paid people whose jobs are being undercut by illegal labour or the use of identity fraud for terrorism—all of them issues that make the case for ID cards—they will be greater in 10 years' time. Therefore, we need to make a success of the project now.
	I welcome what the Government have done. As my hon. Friend the Minister made clear, the change was proposed originally by the Select Committee nearly two years ago, and I would not be a Select Committee Chair if I did not point out that sometimes it would be nice if our reports were acted on when they were first written, not a couple of years later when it becomes convenient to do so.
	We were right to talk about new parliamentary legislation for two reasons. The term "compulsory", which I hope I will come back to on the next set of amendments, is being used in different ways in this debate. It is perfectly clear that, in the first phase of establishing the national identity register, those who wish to have a passport, for example, if it is a designated document, will have to go on to the national identity register. However, leaving aside the issues of principle, at least in that process the individual is making use of a service that is of benefit to them, namely, getting hold of a passport. It is reasonable to assume that there will be a powerful driver for any Government to ensure that that process is convenient, effective and works quickly. We saw a few years ago how quickly the public respond if something goes wrong in an agency such as the Passport and Records Agency.
	The second phase of the process is entirely different, because that will require individuals to register and go through a process of registering their biometrics, and so forth, for which they get nothing back immediately—for example, in the form of a passport. Getting that phase right and being sure that the system is designed to make the process as user-friendly as possible is critical. When we considered the Bill two years ago, we could not look eight years into the future and know the design of the process. It is right for Parliament to say that it wants not only a yes-no super-affirmative vote, but fresh legislation and an explanation from the Government of the day of how that part of the process, which is frankly much more difficult, will be handled.

David Davis: Demand for a good service does not always deliver a good service—the right hon. Gentleman has previously mentioned the UK Passport Service, the Child Support Agency and pensions. A series of large Government IT projects have gone seriously wrong, despite the fact that serious political embarrassment follows such events.

John Denham: We know that all public or private sector IT projects are not successful. The UK Passport Service and the Criminal Records Bureau are good examples of projects that ran into difficulty early on and that were turned around rapidly because it was unacceptable not to solve the problems. I suspect that the first phase of national identity registration will be similar—I doubt whether the process will start without any problems at all, but I am sure that such problems will be put right quickly.
	Parliament must be concerned whether the system works effectively for those who do not drive and who do not have a passport, which will require new legislation.

David Davis: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way and apologise for making a second intervention. The size and complexity of the task is one factor affecting the speed with which such issues can be put right. The CSA is a good example of a problem that is intractable because it is too complex. Is there not a risk that this particular project will fall into the same category?

John Denham: No; the process is a good deal less complex than that of the CSA, which faces intrinsic problems such as income assessment and deduction of earnings—I am sure that hon. Members do not want us to get into a detailed debate about that topic. Although the process must be repeated for millions of people, the inherent issues in national identity registration are simpler than those in the projects that have gone wrong.
	The Select Committee was right to press for separate legislation from the outset, because however well the Bill is scrutinised by us and the House of Lords, it is doubtful whether it will be perfect in six or seven years' time. Even if this were not a Home Office Bill, it would inevitably require a certain amount of amendment, clarification and adjustment in due course. It would be ridiculous to update this Bill and have a separate super-affirmative resolution on the question of extending it to the final 20 to 25 per cent. of the population.
	The change is sensible, because it means that on the crucial step of extending the provision to the group of people who are more difficult to reach, Parliament will be able to take an entirely fresh look at the project's strengths and weaknesses.

Gwyneth Dunwoody: Surely we know what any Government would say at that point. They would not say, "This is a question of principle: should we or should we not hold all this information about our people, who have committed no crime and who are not in themselves criminals?" They would say, as Governments always say, "We don't know why you are arguing about this now. You gave up that principle when you accepted the primary legislation."

John Denham: The point of principle is that this House and this country should take steps towards a compulsory national identity register, which is necessary in the broadest sense for the security and well-being of the people of this country. The question how the register will be extended in six or seven years' time to those people who are not on it through passports or other designated documents must be addressed properly by Parliament at that particular point.

John Bercow: One of the most significant indicators of the Government's continuing commitment to compulsion is that the UK Passport Service, at the behest or with the connivance of the Government, is planning no fewer than 70 new prime high street sites, from which Crown post offices will be excluded from competing on an equal basis for first-time passport applicants. How does the right hon. Gentleman reconcile his claim that computer projects are improving with the fact that the proposal will add greatly to the Government's costs?

John Denham: Clearly, the project to be implemented will involve the Passport and Records Agency and other bodies making appropriate arrangements for people to register. I am not in a position to debate the detail of the proposals that the hon. Gentleman raises, but I see no problem in the Government ensuring, within the rules, that the necessary infrastructure is in place so that when we are invited to join the national identity register, which we will have to do for the purpose of renewing our passports, that process is as convenient for the individual as possible. I would expect no less of the Passport and Records Agency or of any other part of Government.

Several hon. Members: rose—

John Denham: I give way to the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier)

Edward Garnier: I am grateful to the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee. On passports, does he agree that we must consider carefully the arguments about convenience that he touched on a moment ago? The   Government claim that international obligations require us to have on our passports biometric information that will be sucked into, or will be available to be stored on, the national identity register. However, our international obligation is merely for our passports to have digitised biometrics that are readable by the passport officer using a machine at the port of entry—those biometrics would not be accessible by a national identity register. The Government keep trying to smooth over that distinction.

John Denham: The hon. and learned Gentleman and I start this debate from different points of view: he is against having a national ID register and ID cards, and I am in favour of them. My hon. Friend the Minister conceded earlier that the proposals go somewhat beyond the strict minimum required by the International Civil Aviation Organisation and other regulations; however, that is not entirely the point. The ICAO requires this sort of development in the passport and that an infrastructure should be set up to collect biometrics.
	If we are to go through the process of collecting biometrics because our citizens need that to be done to travel abroad, let us do the job properly and do the other thing that we need to do, namely, establish a decent ID card system and a national identity register. We need that development to enable us to tackle the whole range of identity fraud and to deal with illegal migration problems over the next 10 years, particularly as the EU expands and borders become more difficult to secure nationally. That is a gain worth having. The fact that we need to collect biometric data for passport use does not mean that all we should do is the absolute minimum required by those international requirements, given that the gains of having a decent identity register system are significant. That is where the hon. and learned Gentleman and I have different approaches to these issues.

David Winnick: My right hon. Friend and I disagree profoundly in the Home Affairs Committee, so we have a minority report of one. I know that he is even more strongly in favour of identity cards than the Government. He talked about and gave examples of the ways in which identity cards will resolve various problems, but many of us believe that they are being held up as some sort of panacea on terrorism and identity fraud, whereby if we name a problem, the identity card will resolve it. We simply do not believe that identity cards will be the solution any more than they have been in countries such as Spain, where there has been terrorism.

John Denham: I am in danger, which I said I would avoid, of being drawn into a Second Reading debate. My hon. Friend played an active role in our inquiries. As he said earlier, we agreed entirely with what the Government are now doing on the point that we are discussing. My view—and that of the majority of the Select Committee—is that identity cards will make a significant contribution to each problem that we are trying to tackle. They will absolutely solve few if any problems, but without an identity card system we will be far less well equipped to tackle them.
	Anybody who suggests that identity cards or the national identity register are a panacea for all problems is wrong and would be misleading people, but those who say that they have no useful role in tackling identity fraud are also wrong.

Alistair Carmichael: I pay tribute to the exceptionally deft and dexterous manner in which the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality and the Home Secretary handled compulsion. It takes special skill to present to the House an unworkable scheme, suffer a defeat on it in the other place and subsequently present an acceptance of a defeat on an unworkable scheme as a remarkable triumph and concession. Ministers should be given due credit for that.
	I listened to some of the remarks of the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) with wry amusement. He said that the Government were going into reverse gear. Some of us remember that when the Identity Cards Bill was introduced in the previous Parliament, the Conservative party began in reverse gear. It managed to coast in neutral for a while and it has now managed to find a forward gear, albeit a low one.

Edward Garnier: I do not know how low my gears can go, but the hon. Gentleman would not have found me in a Lobby in favour of the Bill in this Parliament or the previous one.

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I remind hon. Members that we are not debating Second Reading; we are debating Lords amendment No. 19.

Alistair Carmichael: Indeed, Madam Deputy Speaker. Even without that intervention, I should not have tried to highlight the divisions in the Conservative party on the Bill at different stages.
	As the Minister has already said, I have been critical of the little-lamented super-affirmative procedure, which was unworkable. However, as one who deeply opposes the identity cards scheme and the identity register and does not want the introduction of any element of compulsion, I almost mourn its passing. The super-affirmative procedure was a secondary legislative procedure and the Parliament Act could not be applied to it. It would therefore have been possible, especially given the requirement to agree a report in both Houses, to block the implementation of a compulsory scheme indefinitely. However, it is not the job of the House to implement law that we know to be bad, even if it sometimes appears convenient to do that. The Lords amendments improve the opportunity for scrutiny through a second primary measure and Liberal Democrat Members welcome that.
	The hon. and learned Member for Harborough has already made the point that the compulsion that the amendments would exclude is merely express compulsion. The possibility of compulsion by stealth, which we shall discuss shortly, through the designated documents remains. The Government oversell their position when Ministers claim, as they did today, that they have made some great concession that requires the House to revisit compulsion at a later date in primary legislation.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (David Howarth) made a good point, which the Minister and his officials should consider at their leisure, about the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill, which is beginning its passage through the House. Hon. Members know that, if enacted in its current form, it would allow the Government to amend primary legislation through using statutory instruments. It therefore remains open to the Government to use secondary legislation to amend the Identity Cards Bill or to introduce compulsion. That worries me.
	There are two possible routes that could be taken here. The first is that the Minister could stand up today and state expressly that that is not the Government's intention. The alternative route—which I believe would be open to the House on another occasion, and I commend it to hon. Members in the light of that—would be to amend the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill when we have the opportunity to do so. To give the Government the power to amend primary legislation in the sweeping way that is proposed by that Bill seems very wrong.

Celia Barlow: I shall endeavour to keep to the subject of the amendment, although other issues are involved. I believe that even hon. Members who are against ID cards would agree that they would be effective only if it became compulsory to own one at some time in the future. I welcome the Government's intention to have a separate vote on compulsion in some years' time. In the meantime, providing ID cards only to people who specifically ask for them would only reap certain advantages. A secure form of proving who we are would be beneficial for everyone who wished to have an ID card, but for them to provide their full benefit, we must not only encourage people to take them up initially but make them compulsory later.

Peter Bone: Does the hon. Lady agree that if 80 per cent. of the population had already been forced to have an ID card because they required one for this or that reason, the vote on compulsion would be irrelevant anyway?

Celia Barlow: I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman. All the investigations carried out by newspapers, for example, have shown that the majority of people are in favour of ID cards.
	People renewing their passport will have to provide their biometric data. Why should we not encourage the take-up of ID cards and ensure that they become compulsory by issuing them along with passports? The two should be issued simultaneously. The Lords amendment would create uncertainty about when and how the second compulsory stage would be brought in, thereby losing that window of opportunity.
	Much has been said about the cost of the scheme, although I appreciate that that is not the issue before us at the moment. However, many of my constituents in Hove and Portslade are extremely worried about that aspect of the scheme. It would be even more costly if we allowed several schemes—such as ID cards, driving licences and passports—to exist side by side. The Bill obviously merges the UK Passport Service with the new agency responsible for ID cards, which would also work closely with UKvisas and the immigration and nationality directorate. It would therefore be far cheaper to support the Government's proposal to issue an ID card automatically to people who apply for a passport or a driving licence. The biometric technology is there, so we should use it to issue ID cards.

Gwyneth Dunwoody: Why does my hon. Friend say that the biometric technology is there? In fact, there is a great deal of evidence to show that the biometrics are very iffy indeed, and that they work only under certain conditions. I did a lot of detailed work with my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton, North (Frank Cook) on a Bill that dealt with eyes in this regard.

Celia Barlow: I take the hon. Member's point—

Gwyneth Dunwoody: Hon. Friend.

Celia Barlow: I take my hon. Friend's point. However, I must say that biometric technology has been tried and tested in this country. It is certainly being used at the moment with asylum seekers in my constituency, although perhaps not to the full extent that will be necessary when it appears on ID cards.

Edward Garnier: The Government had a pilot scheme in Leicester, the closest city to my constituency, in which they tested the biometric technology for fingerprints and eyes. Among the Asian population, 20 per cent. of the biometric tests failed. Is the hon. Lady content with that?

Celia Barlow: Obviously, I am not. This is why there would be several different forms of biometric identification data on each ID card.

Stewart Hosie: Will the hon. Lady give way?

Celia Barlow: I would like to make some progress.
	As my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham) said, it will be necessary to move towards compulsion in the broader interests of national and personal security. ID cards will be a vital tool in fighting organised crime. At the moment, the Home Office identity fraud steering committee says that the cost to the UK economy of identity fraud is £1.7 billion. Given the greater ease of foreign travel—in which Members on both sides of the House are interested—identity fraud is not only becoming more prevalent; it is allowing fraud crimes of increased enormity to take place.

Tobias Ellwood: Will the hon. Lady give way?

Celia Barlow: I want to make some progress. Many other Members are eager to speak.
	I know from my constituency surgeries of the incredible pain and difficulty that identity fraud can create.

Lynne Jones: Is my hon. Friend aware that £62.8 million of the cost of identity theft is estimated to be the cost to the UK Passport Service of measures to counter such fraud? Obviously, that is much less than the cost of implementing this scheme. Moreover, the estimate of credit card payment fraud submitted by the Association for Payment Clearing Services is about a tenth of the Government's figure. A growing problem is "customer not present" fraud, which identity cards will not deal with at all

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. May I again remind Members of the amendment that we are discussing?

Celia Barlow: Without such a secure compulsory system, the £1.7 billion figure, which is expected to grow, will be set to rise every year. That is why figures such as those given by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Lynne Jones), which I have no reason to question, are irrelevant in the longer term.

Stewart Hosie: How can a compulsory identity card—given that biometric information is held centrally and locked in the card, and in a person's face, eyes and fingerprint—possibly deal with fraud involving a card transaction when the person is not present and neither he nor the card can be checked by a scanner?

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I remind Members once again of the amendment that is under discussion.

Celia Barlow: The hon. Gentleman obviously was not present for the Second Reading debate, when all that was explained.
	While we all value our civil liberties, protection from criminals should be seen as a right—a compulsory right that our Government should be expected to protect. When identities are stolen, our privacy is stolen. When identities are stolen, our financial safety and security are under threat. ID cards—and compulsory ID cards—will protect our ability to live as free individuals in society, without fear of terrorism or financial crime. That is why I am glad that the Government have accepted the Lords amendments to remove the clauses on compulsion by means of the super-affirmative resolution procedure. However, I support the Government amendment to revise the definition of compulsion so that it refers to future primary legislation.

William Cash: I want to make only a few simple comments.
	I strongly object to the amendments, not because they take away two clauses—like my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier), I can understand that—but because I do not welcome the Government's adoption of a de minimis approach. As I explained to the Minister, who is not present at the moment, the amendments make absolutely no difference to the principles involved. For practical purposes, this is just an exercise in tactical retreat. There is no difference between what is being said now and what was said on Second Reading, when my Front-Bench colleagues produced what could be described as the excruciating sound of reverse gears. I am glad, because there were issues of principle, but in this context my point about the Government is much more important.

Charles Clarke: Will the hon. Gentleman confirm that he is accusing his Front Bench of flip-flopping and flip-flopping on the issue?

William Cash: I would not put it in such gentle terms. I would simply say that I am delighted that my Front-Bench colleagues have taken the view that they have, and have resolutely stuck by it throughout the Committee stage and subsequently—unlike the Minister, who has come to water extremely slowly and reluctantly. The fact is that this is a political exercise—[Interruption.] I am glad that the Home Secretary sees the joke; the truth is that this is nothing more nor less than a tactical retreat.

Philip Hollobone: Does my hon. Friend agree that if anybody is guilty of flip-flopping, it is Her Majesty's Government, who have flip-flopped over their reasons for introducing this Bill?

William Cash: I am pleased to confirm what my hon. Friend says.
	I am afraid that I must point out to the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham) that his argument misses the wood for the trees. He is a tremendous advocate of identity cards and he argues that we do not know what the position will be in eight years' time, but I point to the example—as I have done before—of "Nineteen Eighty-Four". When George Orwell wrote that book in the 1940s, he was projecting forward to what would happen in circumstances that he foresaw at that time. I recognise the motivation behind the right hon. Gentleman's argument, but he is completely missing the point. The Information Commissioner made it abundantly clear that the Bill will fundamentally alter the relationship between the individual and the state. He has kept very quiet about the arrangements made and the amendments tabled since our debate on Second Reading. I should be very interested to know his thoughts now, but I doubt whether he has changed his opinion very much.
	The plain fact is that this is a matter of principle and the Bill constitutes a fundamental change in the relationship between the individual and the state; whether one calls the Government's approach a flip-flop, a change into reverse gear or a tactical retreat makes no difference to that fundamental point. This is the offence of which I accuse the Government: they are engaging in a cynical exercise to gain more control over the individual, and in a way that is inimical to the liberties of the people of this country.

John Denham: Perhaps I can quote to the hon. Gentleman the Select Committee's conclusion on the very point that we are discussing. We said:
	"An identity card scheme of the sort and on the scale proposed by the Government would undoubtedly represent a significant change in the relationship between the state and the individual in this country."
	However, we went on to say:
	"International experience does not suggest that objections of principle are overwhelming",
	and we proceeded to back the idea of an ID card scheme. So we recognised the issue—and we dealt with it.

William Cash: With great respect to the right hon. Gentleman, that sounds to me like a pretty typical report from the members of the Home Affairs Committee. They say, "We concede that this is a matter of fundamental importance to the relationship between the individual and the state, but it doesn't matter: we've got a whole range of other reasons that we can invoke for making such a change." We have seen some pretty remarkable Select Committee reports over the years, but that one just about takes the biscuit.

John Bercow: We have just heard the verdict of theright hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham) and his Committee, but does my hon. Friend recall that it was the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) who argued—as long as two years ago—that, yes, compulsory ID cards would indeed change the relationship between the individual and the state, in the sense that they would allow him to overcome his sense of alienation and to assert his identity. I have met a lot of people in Buckingham who have grumbled about the loss of identity, but I have yet to hear any of them say that the problem would be addressed by a compulsory ID card from this Government.

William Cash: Absolutely. In fact, the Government are suffering from what could be described as severe political schizophrenia.

Tobias Ellwood: The Orwellian scenario to which my hon. Friend referred is not that far away. We established in Committee that not only an ID card reader but a biometric reader will be needed at every airport terminal and in every police car, so the requirement to hold an ID card is not really necessary. Once the information is on a database, we will have to enter our details at a given terminal every time that we are arrested. That makes the whole debate on ID cards and compulsion completely obsolete.

William Cash: The real reason why the Government areincluding arrangements relating to biometric procedures is that they are based on a European directive, and the Government know that perfectly well. It is time that the House understood the extent to which domestic legislation is driven by European directives and regulations. The Home Secretary knows that that is why it is impossible to change the arrangements in the Bill. He has already signed up to them. He has given it away in principle and in practice.

Tony McNulty: For the sake of clarity and just in case the hon. Gentleman is not clear on the point, may I say that when we discuss primary legislation, we mean this Parliament, not the European Parliament?

William Cash: I am very clear on that point, as I am on all matters relating to that subject.
	When Mr. Frattini referred, on "The World at One", to the fact that he was in favour of securing our borders, he made it clear that he meant the EU borders. It is also clear that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in his remarks yesterday—and the day before and the day before that, in his jostling for the premiership of this country—may be taking a divergent view of the principles in the Bill. The Home Secretary shakes his head—[Interruption.] He has his fingers crossed. When the Chancellor of the Exchequer refers to the necessity of ensuring that we secure our own borders, that is not the same as the arrangements that have already been set up and that are dedicated to preserving EU borders, not our own.

Keith Vaz: Surely the hon. Gentleman knows that under the Hague arrangements, which followed the Tampere discussions, the European countries, working together, could do a great deal to combat international fraud through the use of identity procedures.

William Cash: I am grateful for that intervention, but I thought that the hon. Gentleman was about to refer to the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) on this matter. The plain fact remains that whether one considers the Tampere discussions or the Hague conventions or arrangements made at a summit in The Hague or in any other circumstances, the provisions in the Bill are inimical to the principles and liberties on which this country has been built. We do not have state control or a police state, but this Bill is the beginning of such arrangements. Ministers know that to be the case, although they are camouflaging it under a range of matters, including terrorism and state security. In essence, they are giving away the fundamental liberties of the people of this country and that is why we should oppose all the measures in this Bill.

Neil Gerrard: I shall be brief, so that other hon. Members have the chance to speak. I shall try to stick, as little of the debate has done, to the substance of the amendment. It deals with the simple issue of compulsion. I could go on at great length about the Bill, as I have in the past, but I want to point out that no other country is doing this. No other country is going down this road. I think that in a couple of years the whole issue will be abandoned. The idea that the Home Office, of all Departments, will get this massive infrastructure to work, which nobody else in the world has managed to do, is unreal.
	I do not wish to exaggerate the importance of the amendment, because it would not affect everybody. It affects those people who will not be caught under clause 5. The amendment will make a difference because primary legislation, with proper debate and scrutiny in this place, will be needed before a move to compulsion. I would much rather have that than secondary legislation. We should welcome the fact that this step has been taken; it is an improvement, although it does not deal with the aspects of the Bill that concern some people.
	I emphasise the point that I made in an intervention: the relationship between the amendment and clause 15, which covers the power to make public services conditional on identity checks. The Minister confirmed earlier that if the amendment is accepted clause 15 cannot come into effect without further primary legislation, and that is important.

Charles Clarke: I confirm that what my hon. Friend has just said is correct. The aspects of the Bill dealing with free public services could not come into effect until primary legislation to make the whole system compulsory had been passed.

Neil Gerrard: That is an important effect of the amendment and I welcome it, because some of the last people to receive a card, who would in the end be caught by compulsion, are those who rely on public services.

Ben Wallace: In relation to the Home Secretary's response, if the access to public services were an application for a driving licence, passport or designated document, compulsion would still exist.

Neil Gerrard: I think that the hon. Gentleman is wrong. The compulsory element in relation to public services in clause 15 relates not to designated documents but to individuals subject to compulsory registration. If the amendment were to have the effect that the hon. Gentleman suggests, there would be a problem, but the Home Secretary has made it clear that it will not.

Anne Main: Does the hon. Gentleman share my concern that, if it becomes compulsory to have an ID card to use the national health service, we shall be undermining the principle that the NHS is free at the point of use? People would have to pay to use it; without the card they would be unable to access services that we have always understood are free at the point of use.

Neil Gerrard: I wish that the hon. Lady had listened to my starting point on the issue. I am not defending the ID card scheme. I have never said that it was a great idea. I am making the simple point that this narrow amendment is an improvement. I do not want to be churlish and say that it does not matter; it is a step in the right direction. Given a choice, I would scrap the whole thing, but the amendment is a positive step.

David Winnick: I share my hon. Friend's complete opposition to ID cards, but should not those of us on the Labour Benches who have urged the Government to listen and respond to criticism of this and other issues welcome the fact that they have done so? Like my hon. Friend, I would rather that they scrapped the whole business, but as they will not, the fact that primary legislation will be required for compulsion is undoubtedly a shift in the right direction.

Neil Gerrard: That is the simple point that I wanted to make, so I shall give another Member the opportunity to speak.

Chris Mole: This is an important opportunity to look once again at the Government's proposals and to consider the changes incorporated by the Lords. I welcome the steps that the Government have taken recently to secure the substance of their programme.
	Inevitably, questions about personal privacy, civil liberties, system security, cross-predictability and function creep must be taken into account in the development of an identity verification system, but by removing compulsion in relation to entry on the national identity register and in dealing with designated documents—the substance of the amendments—the Lords would make the system less secure and its use in public services less effective. In fact, the measures address none of the substantive issues with which Parliament might properly be concerned, and can be considered only as spoiling tactics designed to make the implementation of ID cards impossible in practice. If those are the Opposition's tactics—that is by no means clear from what the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) has said today—they are not in the interests of the British people, do not reflect the world in which we live and, frankly, constitute opposition for opposition's sake. The churlish contribution from the hon. and learned Member for Harborough—
	It being one and a half hours after the commencement of proceedings, Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Order [this day], put forthwith the Question already proposed from the Chair.
	Question accordingly agreed to.
	Lords amendment agreed to.
	Mr. Speaker then proceeded to put forthwith the Questions necessary for the disposal of the business to be concluded at that hour.
	Lords amendment No. 21 disagreed to.
	Government amendment (a) in lieu of Lords amendment No. 21 agreed to.
	Lords amendments Nos. 20 and 23 agreed to

Clause 5
	 — 
	Applications relating to entries in Register

Lords amendment: No 16, in page 4, line 44 leave out "must" and insert
	"may, if the individual so chooses,"

Charles Clarke: I beg to move, That the House disagrees with the Lords in the said amendment.

Mr. Speaker: With this we may discuss Lords amendment No. 22 and Government motion to disagree.

Charles Clarke: The House debated the essence of this issue on Report on 18 October. It rejected proposals similar to the Lords amendments, and I hope that it will reject them now. Although Lords amendments Nos. 16 and 22 rest on changing a "must" to a "may", which seems a very small change, they risk undermining the basis of the current identity cards proposal, and for those reasons they must be resisted strongly by the Government and by the House.
	We have always been clear that the identity cards scheme is being designed and is intended, eventually, to become a compulsory scheme for all UK residents, and that in the second phase of the scheme it will be a requirement to register, with a civil financial penalty regime for failure to do so. Throughout, we have also been equally clear that linking identity cards to the issue of designated documents is a central part of the scheme in the first phase. That will enable a sensible, phased introduction of identity cards.
	Once passports and residence permits are designated, when British nationals resident in the United Kingdom, renew or apply for their residence permits they will be entered on the national identity register and issued with cards that will serve as ID cards. That approach is well known and will not come as a surprise to the House. When the Government issued our first consultation document about a card scheme in 2002, one of the options canvassed was a universal scheme linked to passports.
	When we announced the decision in principle in November 2003, it was made clear that there would be a two-stage scheme and that the second stage would be compulsory. However, on the first stage, we stated in "Identity Cards: the Next Steps":
	"By linking the card scheme to widely held identity documents most people will get a card conveniently and automatically as they renew an existing document".
	That announcement in principle in 2003 was put into effect when we published the draft Bill, as long ago as April 2004, when we included the word "must" in clause 5(2). Yet again, we made it absolutely clear that, once designated, obtaining a passport would also involve being issued with an identity card.
	It is also clear that, other than the biometrics—an important development in the whole security of card systems—no information will be required from an individual as part of that process that the state does not already hold in one form or another. To put the compulsory element of the designation of documents another way, it will be compulsory for information already held by the state to be placed on the national identity register. No new information will be required as part of that process.

Lynne Jones: As I understand it, a fully biometric passport that complies with European Union requirements should have a facial biometric and two fingerprints. However, as my right hon. Friend said at Question Time, he proposes to have up to 13 biometric elements stored on the national register. It is not correct to say that that information is required for the passport and that the Government would therefore necessarily have that information and the full biometrics.

Charles Clarke: My hon. Friend is correct in that the information is not required as part of the current EU passport regime—the fantasies of the hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Cash) are relevant in that respect. However, for a variety of reasons, all Governments are determined—it was set out in no less a source than the United Nations Security Council resolution last September—to move to a fully biometric scheme for passports. That is part of the overall world approach, which this Government strongly support, to the most secure system of biometrics to protect us most effectively in a wide variety of ways.
	My hon. Friend's point is about biometrics for the passport scheme and not about the ID card scheme, although they are related. We believe, as a Government, that getting properly secure biometrics for the passport scheme is not only in our interests in this country but is part of our international obligations.

Lynne Jones: The biometric passport is fully biometric because it has biometrics on it; it just has not got all the biometrics. Which other countries propose to have 13 sets of biometric data on a centrally held database?

Charles Clarke: A number of countries, including the United States of America, is the answer to my hon. Friend's question.

Edward Garnier: I invite the Home Secretary to be quite careful about this. I do not want him to mislead himself or anybody else. Is there not a difference between the international obligation and what the Government require? Under the international obligation, biometric information that can be read by a passport officer's machine appears on the face of the passport. What the Government require us to do is to provide biometric information on the passport that can be read by, and stored in, the national identity register. There is quite a difference of quality and principle that the Government keep eliding.

Charles Clarke: The hon. and learned Gentleman is right in one respect. We are in an evolving situation as far as the international requirements are concerned. That applies to the EU, the International Civil Aviation Organisation and the UN Security Council resolution. It is equally the case that many countries are evolving their own systems—whether they go for the number of biometrics that my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Lynne Jones) mentioned, for biometrics for all 10 fingers and thumbs or the 13 that we will have for our ID cards. It is also true that there are different states of decision in different countries on those points. All is evolving. However, both within the EU and in the dialogue between the EU and the United States that has explicitly addressed these matters, including in the G8 context, the overwhelming view is to move towards the most rigorous form of biometrics for fundamental documents such as passports and visas. That is the point that I am trying to make.

Keith Vaz: Has my right hon. Friend seen the report published today by the Commission for Racial Equality in which it specifically talks about the use of biometrics in relation to the black community and about the difficulties with the technology?

Charles Clarke: I have seen that report. If one considers different biometrics, one sees that there are different issues for different communities. The biometrics for the face, the iris and for fingerprints and thumbprints give rise to different issues in each case. However, as I know my hon. Friend will accept, the point is simple and straightforward. The more biometrics we have, the more reliable and fraud-proof is the system. For example, it is better to have biometrics for all 10 fingers and thumbs than it is to have them for one.

Gordon Prentice: My passport is coming up for renewal. I will have to offer biometric data and I understand that, but what about the non-biometric data and the registrable facts that we would have to offer as part of the process of getting an ID card?

Charles Clarke: I made the point earlier that the non-biometric facts that will be required for the identity card will be broadly the same as those needed for passports, residence and immigration documents and other purposes. It is not the case that more information will be requested. In fact, less information will be required for the ID card than for some other purposes.

Frank Cook: I thank my right hon. Friend for responding to our conversation last week in written form, which I received this morning. However, the letter says:
	"We are designing the scheme in such a way that there is no direct access to the Register itself by organisations—Government or non-Government—who want to verify a card-holder's identity. Organisations will be able to use an identity verification service to verify basic identity information".
	What is the difference between the register and the identity verification service?

Charles Clarke: I need to make it clear that the register will be the record of each citizen's biometrics and a limited amount of other data relating to them, such as name, sex and so on. It will be a basic database for each of those people. The service to which I referred in the letter to my hon. Friend would enable other agencies, whether governmental or non-governmental, to use the data for the purpose of verification. An organisation that wants to use the central data will work via a verification service, which was the distinction that I was trying to draw.

Tobias Ellwood: The Government's figures show that while £1.3 billion is lost due to fraud each year, identity-related fraud accounts for between £20 million and £50 million a year. That amount is considerably less than the £85 million cost of implementing the ID card system, as we established in Committee. The scheme will be an expensive, intrusive and unproven way of tackling ID fraud.

Charles Clarke: The hon. Gentleman raised that matter during previous stages of the Bill's consideration. We will debate costs when we consider Lords amendment No. 1. The most recent estimate of the cost of identity fraud throughout the country is £1.7 billion. That is a significant amount, so we must address the problem.

Lembit �pik: I know that the right hon. Gentleman wants to make progress, but will he answer a question? I am vexed that he does not entertain the possibility that storing the information centrally will create the opportunity for corruption and the abuse of information. What would he say to those of us who think that the concentration of data in itself will create a considerable temptation for organised criminals to hack into the information and thus institute other methods of fraud and ways of achieving identity theft?

Charles Clarke: First and foremost, I am very keen not to have the support of the hon. Gentleman in this voteGod knows what would happen if I did.

David Davis: We can guarantee that.

Charles Clarke: As the right hon. Gentleman says, we can guarantee that.
	Only one question needs to be asked about security: will the system that we are creating be more or less susceptible to fraud than the system that we have now? I argue strongly that the system that we are creating will be less susceptible to fraud, whether we are considering passports that are used fraudulently, or the variety of ways in which identity fraud is committed. Of course we will have to consider fraud under the new system, but we must compare the system that we are establishing with the existing system.

David Davis: I shall make this intervention as constructively as I can. The simple truth is that the test is not simply whether the system will be better than that which we have now. Given that we will be spending a large sum, we must consider whether the system will be the best that might be available. Plenty of identity card systems do not challenge individual privacy or require massive central databases, but are far more secure than the system that the right hon. Gentleman proposes.

Charles Clarke: With the greatest respect to the right hon. Gentleman, I do not think that he is correct. The distinguishing aspect of the scheme is the move towards using fingerprint biometrics and other biometrics. To respond to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak, some 30 countries already intend to include fingerprint biometrics on their passports. As I said, the United States is increasing its programme. In my opinion it would be utterly foolish of us not to take advantage of the advances in biometrics to increase our security, and that is the intention behind the proposal.

Ben Wallace: If the Home Secretary is so confident in his proposal for a central database, why did the Home Office last month invite a number of technology companies and biometrics experts to submit proposals to put biometrics on cards as part of the ID scheme?

Charles Clarke: We had a substantial discussion with the whole industry about our proposals to ensure that we work as best we can with the most up-to-date technologies. The right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) was right to say that the technology is fast moving. Many companies are involvedmany British companies are in the lead, by the wayand we want to work closely with them. That is an intelligent course for us to follow.
	My argument is that the ID cards system brings substantial benefits to both individuals and society and that the opt-out proposed by the Lords puts those benefits at risk. Focusing on passports and residence permits means that we can target a manageable number of people each year who will go through the process and minimise uncertainties that would otherwise apply to rolling out the scheme nationally. The benefits of the ID cards scheme will grow steadily as more people obtain their cards. By linking the process with the issue or renewal of a document such as a passport, which around 80 per cent. of the population already holds, there will be a manageable roll-out of the ID cards scheme. That is surely in the public interest. If those hon. Members who say that they are concerned about the cost of the scheme really do want to avoid excessive costs, they should accept the logic of combining the process of issuing ID cards with the issuing of passports or immigration documents.
	In practice, of course, the process of obtaining a passport and an ID card will be combined in future, so issuing the two documents as a package will be just as convenient as applying for a biometric passport. When we introduce passports with fingerprint biometrics, the process of obtaining a passport and an ID card will be so similar as to make the need to combine the two quite obvious.

Patrick McFadden: The Secretary of State mentioned costs. Has his Department conducted any studies of the cost implications of the amendment? What extra costs would there be to the taxpayer if the idea of combining ID cards with passports were abandoned?

Charles Clarke: The Department has not made a systematic, rigorous assessment of the costs that my hon. Friend describes, but we have considered the issue in principle, to see what the overall situation would be. As he implies, if the amendment were passed, the costs would be greater because they would be shared among fewer people and the implementation of the whole ID cards system would be far less assured. If the amendment proposed by the Lords were passed, the effect on both the cost and the roll-out of the scheme would be serious, but detailed costings would take some months to clarify.

Robert Smith: Is not the logic of the Home Secretary's argument that, because the cost would be shared by fewer people, there is therefore less desire for ID cards in the country than he suspects? Would it not make more sense to accept the Lords amendments and respect the rights of individuals to choose how quickly the scheme is rolled out and whether they will take part in it, and thereby make it truly voluntary?

Charles Clarke: I think that I addressed that argument earlier. We have set out from the beginning our intention to move to a compulsory scheme in two phasesI said earlier what compulsion means in this case.
	Let me now deal with the designated documents. First, I confirm again that the Government's intention is to designate British passports issued to UK residents aged 16 or over, so that an ID card must be issued alongside a passport, as a package. Secondly, it is intended to designate residence permits and other immigration documents issued to foreign nationals resident in the UK for more than three months. Thirdly, we intend to issue stand-alone ID cards, but they would be issued on a voluntary basis under clause 8 and would not require the use of the designation power in clause 4.

Neil Gerrard: Is not there a potential problem with the European convention on human rights if the Home Secretary imposes a requirement on a foreign national that is not imposed on a British citizen?

Charles Clarke: We believe that there is no problem of that type at all. The immigration documents that we are describing relate to people coming here on the basis of having to indicate their identity to gain residence permits. That is not only reasonable, as would be clear to anybody, but entirely works with the European convention on human rights and is compliant with it.

Ben Wallace: Will the Home Secretary give way?

Charles Clarke: No, I want to make more progress and will give way in a moment, as I said.
	We do intend to designate the passport. We do intend to designate residence permits and other immigration documents. We do intend to issue stand-alone identity cards, but on a voluntary basis, not a compulsory basis. As we have always made clear, however, we believe that the legislation should be flexible enough to allow for the possibility of designation of other official documents in the future. I have said that I would want to look at the possibility of designation of Criminal Records Bureau certificates in England and Wales. There may be a good case for designating those documents, but we would need to consider issues such as the impact on volunteers, and that would be for future consideration.
	In the light of some of the recent publicity, I should make it clear that, along with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport, I have looked actively at designating driving licences, but we have decided not to do so. The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency already uses the passport database to check, with consent, the identity of people applying for photocard licences. That is more secure for the DVLA and more convenient for individuals, who do not have to send their passport to the DVLA. In the same way, issuing driving licences to people with ID cards will be more secure and convenient, but we have no plans to require people to get an ID card before applying for a driving licence.
	I should emphasis that, as my hon. Friend the Minister of State said, mandatory recall of paper driving licences is a measure to improve the security of driving licences and has nothing to do with ID cards. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport is considering the Government's position on the defeat in the House of Lords on the provision in the Road Safety Bill and will announce his intentions in due course.

Ben Wallace: rose

Philip Hollobone: rose

Charles Clarke: I will give way in a second, as I said.
	I need to make it clear that there will be no possibility of designating any document until the identity card scheme is introduced. The designation order will need to set out the exact details of the proposed class of document, with any exceptions, and will also need to specify the timetable for designation. Each designation order under clause 4 will need to be approved by both Houses of Parliament under the affirmative resolution procedure. It could not be done for any particular document, including all those that I have mentioned, without a very full opportunity for proper debate and scrutiny.
	A number of my colleagues, in particular my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard), have been concerned about the process of designating documents, and I hope that the procedure that I have set out makes clear the approach that we are following.

Ben Wallace: The hon. Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard) made the point about residence permits and human rights. What the Home Secretary has not answeredit was not answered in Committee eitheris how the proposal affects the 380,000 Irish citizens currently resident in this country who enjoy a protection as a result of a separate Irish-Anglo treaty that dates back some years.

Charles Clarke: The proposals relate to UK citizens. We are debating fully with the Irish Government and my colleagues in the Northern Ireland Office the detailed operation of the scheme in the joint travel area, which covers both islandsour island and Ireland.

David Davis: On this specific issue, I have heard from senior members of the Irish Government that if we introduce ID cards they will have to introduce them. It will have to be on a compatible basis and there will have to be information exchange between the countries. Is that true?

Charles Clarke: I am not going to comment on what the right hon. Gentleman may or may not have been told by Ministers in the Irish Government. I will say, as I have said before, that we have had a very full discussion of those issues precisely to be able to clarify those points.
	No document can be designated under clause 4 unless a designation order has been debated and approved by both Houses of Parliament. I should also make it clear at this juncture that there will be the opportunity for Parliament to debate the level of fees to be charged as the identity cards fee regime is also to be set in regulations, subject to the affirmative order procedure. All subsequent changes to the level of fees, apart from increases due to inflation, will be subject to the affirmative procedure, and will thus need the approval of both Houses. I hope that I have shown that it is essential that we have a clear and definite link between an application for a designated document such as a passport and an entry on the national identity register. That has always been our clearly stated policy.

David Winnick: There is bound to be concern among opponents of ID cards that if someone receives a passport or reapplies for one their details will be entered on the register. My right hon. Friend rightly saidsome people may have overlooked thisthat an affirmative order is necessary. However, given that there would be a limited debate if such an order were made, does he not accept that there is a need for a wider debate when the measure returns to the Lords, bearing in mind the principle of the matter and its crucial importance for many of us? He has accepted the need for primary legislation on compulsion, but could he go a little further than the Bill's existing provisions?

Charles Clarke: I am glad that my hon. Friend accepts that an affirmative order is needed if any document is to be designated. There will be an opportunity for debate in the House on those questions. It will take considerable time to designate any document, so the Government would wish to announce such a proposal in advance with the aim of ensuring full debate in both Houses. I am ready to facilitate such a debate, and it is a perfectly reasonable request for the hon. Gentleman to make. I can assure him that we would seek to facilitate debate on all those matters. While it is important that Parliament has the opportunity to address them, people must accept that the key point in relation to passports, residence permits, immigration documents and the Criminal Records Bureau check is that the amount of information given by the individual to the state would be the same as it is now. It is not a question of new information coming online for the stateit is a question of putting that new information, with its biometric assurance, on to a national identity register so that it can work more effectively. Individuals will therefore not give more information to the state than they do at present. That is an important point to grasp.

Kate Hoey: If identity cards are introduced, as has been suggested, will my right hon. Friend confirm that Irish citizens living in this country will not need to have any form of ID whatsoever?

Charles Clarke: No, I am not saying that. The Bill applies to everyone who is legally resident in this country, including Irish citizens. Once it is compulsory to register, Irish citizens resident here would be obliged to register. The common travel area is unaffected in principle by that definition, although, as I told the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden, a series of practical questions arise that are subject to active discussion in those circumstances. There is no requirement or need for the Irish Government to introduce an ID card system because of what our Government doit is for the Irish Government to make their own decisions.
	Following his contact with the Irish Government, the right hon. Gentleman suggested that they would actively consider whether it would be wise to introduce a card system if we did so. I am sure that they would do so in such circumstances, but the key issue is how properly to share information. Apart from any other consideration, there are serious political issues that need to be tackled very carefully.

Philip Hollobone: What rights would other countries have to access the UK identity cards register if we hold information about their citizens?

Charles Clarke: None.

John Bercow: rose

Charles Clarke: I was about to stop giving way, but I shall make an exception for the hon. Member for Buckingham (John Bercow).

John Bercow: I am grateful for the right hon. Gentleman's generosity. As he will know, of 45 clauses in the original Bill no fewer than 25 provided for order-making powers. He has celebrated the fact that the Government will require the use of the affirmative procedure in many instances in future, and he is perfectly entitled to do so. However, as it is vital that our proceedings are intelligible to outside observers, will he put on the record something that we in the Chamber know? If there is a debate on the affirmative procedure, that does not mean a debate on the Floor of the House. It means a debate upstairs, in a small Committee compromising no more than 30 Members and often substantially fewer. It is important that the public should notinadvertently, of coursebe misled.

Charles Clarke: Having participated in many such debates with the hon. Gentleman I know how much he enjoys talking in Committee, often at length, on the issues involved. I believe that he does so in the knowledge that they will be reported and noticed outside.

John Bercow: Only in Buckingham.

Charles Clarke: I know that people are well educated in Buckingham, and they will follow his contributions with particular care.

Robert Wareing: To pursue the question asked by the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr. Hollobone) about access by foreign countries to the register, what concerns me most about the Bill and the database is the issue of who will have access to it and who will give approval for that access. Is it possible for the intelligence services of a foreign country, such as the USA, ever to have access to the database?

Charles Clarke: As I said a moment ago, noperhaps my hon. Friend did not hear that answer. That is not the way in which the system will operate, and what he envisages simply could not happen. There is a clear case for the House to disagree with the Lords amendments, so I urge it to disagree with Lords amendments Nos. 16 and 22.

David Davis: May I begin by saying that I am sorry that the Prime Minister cannot be here today? I doubt that his absence will have as great an influence on the votes tonight as his previous absence, but at least the Home Secretary and I can draw some pleasure from the fact that the phrase, Detained in South Africa has a nicer tone today than it did 20 years ago.
	I wish to discuss the national identity register much more than the piece of plastic or the biometric attached to identity card. The rather arcane subject of this debate is designation. In practice, it is the most controversial and, indeed, the most important debate that we shall hold today, because it will determine whether the ID card scheme is covertly rendered compulsory or not. In 2005, under the heading, Strong and secure borders, page 52 of the 111-page Labour manifesto said:
	We will introduce ID cards, including biometric data like fingerprints, backed up by a national register and rolling out initially on a voluntary basis as people renew their passports.
	I heard what the Home Secretary said about consultation papers and so on, but any reasonable member of the public would deduce that they could choose whether or not to have an ID card when they renewed their passport. That is a perfectly reasonable conclusion to draw, but it is the opposite of what the Government intend. To justify what this Bill does, the Labour manifesto should have said: We will introduce ID cards, including biometric data like fingerprints, backed up by a national register and rolling out initially on a compulsory basis for a progressively larger portion of the population as people renew their passports. That is the truth of today's proposals.
	Faced with that fact, Baroness Scotland, speaking on behalf of the Government, tried to claim that passports are voluntary. That is not the case if someone's work takes them abroad, nor if their parents live abroad, nor if their spouse or partner is from an another country. Nor is it the case if their children travel abroad, fall sick or get into trouble. It is a novel interpretation of voluntary if the price of a foreign holiday is a requirement for inclusion in the national identity register. The Lords therefore amended the Bill, quite properly in my view, to remove that creeping compulsion, and make inclusion on the register optional when someone receives or renews a passport. That is what the Government are seeking to reverse, for reasons to which I shall return.
	The Government may ask why that should be voluntary. If people are already getting a passport, what is the reason for turning down an identity card? There are many good reasons for not wanting to be on the national identity register, which involves a large number of pieces of data about each individual being put on a single Government database, many of them the access keys for other Government databases. That is the important point: it is a central database with access keys effectively to all the other Government databases.
	It is disingenuous of the Home Secretary to say, We've already got all those. One of the transitions that has taken place over the past several years under the Government, and to a small extent under the previous Government too, is the removal of barriers to the transfer of information around Government. Those barriers were a protection of the liberties of the individual, and now they have gone. Many have gone for good reasonto make the Child Support Agency work, to stop terrorism, and so onand the Bill will accelerate that process.
	I ask the House to forgive me for a political point, but it is one that I care about very much. After the way the Government treated Martin Sixsmith, Pam Warren, Rose Addis and others, seeking information about them and using it to destroy reputations, I would not trust them with data about my life, let alone anyone else's.

John Denham: The right hon. Gentleman has spoken about bringing together different databases and his concerns about that. Can he give me an example of two pieces of data that are currently held on separate databases that he does not want brought together, and why?

David Davis: I shall use the examples that I was discussing. When Pam Warren, the rail safety campaigner, was a thorn in the side of the Government, a special adviser, I think, was known to say, Let's look into her political background, her sex life and other such things. [Interruption.] A medical database can give all sorts of informationvisits to clinics, visits to gynaecologists and the like. I shall be happy to take an intervention from the Home Secretary, if he wants to tell me that in due course it will not be possible to access medical databases through the system.
	When people set about trying to create an embarrassing story about somebody, the more detail and the more data they get, the better. Experts in the area have spoken to the official Opposition, and I suspect to the Liberal party as well, of their concern that the audit trail will be loaded on to the databasein other words, every point of access on the database will be logged and recorded. If those on the Government Front Bench want to challenge that as untrue, I am happy to take an intervention. No. Okay.

Chris Mole: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

David Davis: I listened with great interest to the hon. Gentleman's whipped speech. I have had fun before with the Whips' plants on the Government Benches. He is clearly a new addition to that group. I shall give way in a moment.
	In the run-up to the debate there was an independent report about the cost and technical capability of the proposed systemsan independent report by the London School of Economics. [Interruption.] I expected hon. Members to groan. The Governmentand, to my surprise, the Home Secretaryhave been attacking the individuals who drew up that report. As a result, Howard Davies, the head of the LSE, wrote to the Government saying, You are wrong to attack individuals who wrote the report. Sixty different people wrote it. It was peer reviewed. It was written by experts on various aspects of ID card technology. I will return to their views.

Chris Mole: Will the right hon. Gentleman make clear what the fine would be, as prescribed in the schedule, if a special adviser inappropriately and outwith the legislation accessed the sort of information that he suggested?

David Davis: Of course such a person would be fined if he were caught, but one of the problems with the proposal is that high volumes of data would be travelling round the system, and it is not good enough to say that there would be a small fine.
	Let us assume that people do not care about their privacy. Let us assume they believe, as the hon. Gentleman does, that the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary, Mr. Alastair Campbell and a legion of special advisers are all saints. Let us imagine they believe that. There are still good reasons not to want to be on the register. Let us go through them. First, there is the price.

Edward Miliband: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

David Davis: The hon. Gentleman likes to make his name on economics. I will give way to him after this section.
	Even on the Government's figures, the price of passports for a family of four would rise from 134 to 372. On the LSE's figures, which I trust more, the cost could be as high as 300 per person or more than 1,000 for a family of foura plastic poll tax that the Government must fear will lead no one to volunteer for the system.

Edward Miliband: The right hon. Gentleman is much more experienced than I in the House. He is basing his case on an allegation that he made earlier in his speech, that a former special adviser tried to gain access to the privileged details of someone's sex life through Government machinery. If he has evidence of that allegation, he should put it on the table. He should not make such allegations on the Floor of the House under parliamentary privilege.

David Davis: This is the public domain. I do not know what the hon. Gentleman was doing when he was at the Treasury. Perhaps he did not read any newspapers in the past few years. That would explain quite a lot about his political performance.
	Let us return to the subject of the debate. Even if people believe that the Government are well intentionedthey may be

Martin Linton: Since there are only six pieces of personal information on the national identity registername, sex, date of birth, place of birth, nationality and addresshow would the collection of those data, which are already collected for passports, make it any easier or more difficult for the kind of revelations described by the right hon. Gentleman to be made?

David Davis: The primary concern is about a piece of data giving access to other databasesfor example, driving licence number or national insurance number. Such pieces of information are the access keys to other databases. I shall return to that in detail, because there is expert evidence that causes concern among people who know a great deal about that.
	Earlier, in Home Office questions, the Home Secretary made the dubious claim that the Passport Agency has been a tremendous success, which was sort of reiterated in an unqualified way by the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee. The Home Secretary must have far different criteria for success from me and the rest of the country, who have seen many millions of our money squandered on that. It overran significantly and led to great inconvenience for a large number of people.
	As I said to the right hon. Gentleman, four Government agencies have seen projects with a total budget of nearly 9 billion record spectacular failures, racking up a combined overspend of 33.9 billion. Even simple databases are often beyond the Home Office. Why should we imagine that it is capable of setting up the very complex register required by the Bill in an acceptable and workable way? If it goes wrong, that may manifest itself in problems and delays in getting the designated document. How much longer will it take to get a passport if we add the ID card requirements? Once we have renewed our passports, we are required to keep the Government informed of any changes. We will have to tell the Government every time we change our address, on pain of a fine of 1,000, which is quite a lot of money.

Adrian Bailey: I have been listening to the right hon. Gentleman's argument and he makes the point about the alleged unreliability of Home Office IT projects. Does he agree that in fact the process being outlined for what is effectively an evolutionary process for putting data on a database is the proper and valid way to proceed in order to ensure that all procedures are tried and tested before we have the debate on compulsory registration, and that these processes can inform that debate? Should he not therefore be supporting the Government?

David Davis: The hon. Gentleman makes a decent point in truth. A large database should be introduced on an evolutionary basis and slowly. However, that could be done on a much more steady basis with a voluntary system. The point here is the strategic problem of the database itself, but I will come back to that in a moment because it is a serious point to take on.
	There is also the question of inaccuracy. The Government have tried to persuade the public of the value of an identity card, but they have not considered the consequences if there are erroneous records. Many hon. Members have dealt with personal disasters that have befallen constituents when some data held about them have been wrong. As the Select Committee Chairman will know, the Home Office cannot even ensure that the Criminal Records Bureau database is accurate. At one point two thirds of it was in error, and at the last check it was one third. Those are serious errors in what should be an absolutely accurate record. So what chance with a 40 million person database? So there are many major problems even before one considers the hundreds of thousands of people who will be the victims of false positive or false negative biometric tests, as has been clear from the studies done.
	Finally, there is the most important question about the whole issuethe insecurity of the system. The Government have made, in a way properly, much of the issue of identity theft, particularly with regard to terrorism. Yet their proposala point I referred to earlieris to gather the access keys to virtually every Government database in the national identity register, put them on one large computer and then create many thousands of direct access points to that computer. They will have created the most attractive possible target for every fraudster, terrorist, confidence trickster and hacker on the planet. Those people will be able to lift data out and put viruses and false data in.
	If the Pentagon and Microsoft cannot keep hackers from penetrating their mainframes, what chance the Home Office? Speaking about the scheme, Microsoft's national technology officer has said that a central identity database could worsen the very problems that it was intended to prevent, such as terrorism and identity theft. He said that
	ministers should not be building systems that allow hackers to mine information so easily.
	So, far from protecting the public, the Government will put the individual citizen at risk by creating a culture of complacency that is based on an ill-designed and ill-thought-out scheme.
	Incidentally, this is yet another area where the Government mounted a mendacious attack on the independent LSE report. I will deal with that in detail because it is rather important. The section of the report that highlights the very serious security flaws in the proposed system was written not by an antagonist of the identity card system, but by somebody who favours identity cards, Dr. Brian Gladman, the ex-technical director of NATO, who had an eminent career in the British military ensuring the security of our military computer systems. He himself has said:
	the UK ID cards programme as now envisaged will create safety and security risks for those whose details are entered into the system.
	that from an avowed supporter of ID cards.

Edward Balls: I have listened carefully to the right hon. Gentleman's speech and he has made a series of arguments that have not been easy to follow, but as far as I can see, almost every one of them is equally an argument against the Home Office running a passport system using a computer on which identities are stored. I struggle to understand why he is against ID cards, but in favour of passports. His main point seems to be that passports are compulsory, so if ID cards are applied to people with a passport, they will become compulsory too. But is he really saying that passports are compulsory?

David Davis: I am afraid that I do not take responsibility for the hon. Gentleman not being able to understand something. It is as simple as this, and if he listens he may understand. There is a national identity register. It is a central database system. It has many thousands of access points around the country. It has to do so because that is the way it works. It is different from most other identity card systems around the world. The compulsory ones are largely localised databases, not national, and that is why they cost only about 4 a head, not the sort of cost that this system will engender when we see it.
	In a moment of frankness last year, the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality admitted that the Government had exaggerated the value of ID cards in the fight against terrorism. He was very honest, he always is, and I give him credit for that. But as Dr. Gladman suggests, the truth may be far worse. The creation of the national identity register may create a mechanism that will actually allow terrorists to operate under the radar more effectively, undetected until their plans come to fruition. All of those are good reasons for individual citizens not to want to put their details on the national identity register.

David Blunkett: Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that the whole purpose of having a clean identity base is to ensure that once someone's identity has been verified by taking the biometric, that biometric can then never be used by anyone else? If someone takes someone's identity to begin with, they would have to continue with that identity for the rest of their lives. Therefore, the purpose of a clean identity base nationally is to achieve what the Conservative party paraded as its policy before the election, namely, an understanding of who is in the country, who is entitled to work, who is entitled to services and to ensure that those who are not, are precluded from working, drawing down on free services or being involved in other such ventures. Is that not the case?

David Davis: The right hon. Gentleman makes a point that he adheres to honestly and straightforwardly, but on which we differ, and that is that it is possible for the proposed system to be entirely clear and to have perfect integrity. When we were considering the early stages of this when he was still Home Secretary, I went to see the Metropolitan police, at that point under Sir John StevensI know a favourite of hisand I talked to him and all his deputy commissioners about their interest in the system. I put to them a question that I subsequently put to his previous advisers, to the Cabinet Office advisers, and to the briefers who talked to us about this at various stages. The question was this: how will somebody be prevented from putting a virus into one of the many thousands of access points in the system to change a piece of data, for example, relating to me, by inserting a little programme that says that every time a question is asked about me, answer yes?

Edward Leigh: It may get the other Mr. Davis.

David Davis: There are many with the name David Davis. That would be a major disruption for the entire country of Wales. But the simple point was that we received no answer and we still do not have one. That is the point that the Microsoft specialist in this area has made: that it is a very vulnerable exercise to create what he called a honeypot for fraudsters, conmen, thieves, terrorists

Lynne Featherstone: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

David Davis: I have not finished answering this question. I will give way to the hon. Lady in a moment. The right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr.   Blunkett) deserves a clear reply because he will know more of the inwardnesses of this than many others.
	The second point with regard to creating a clean database is that, as the right hon. Gentleman will know, whoever creates it will have to have some originating documents. One of our concerns about this was the prospect that people would come in from mainland Europe and have three months clear, without doing anything, but even if they did nothing for three months, they might come in with documents that were cleared in another part of Europe that is perhaps a little less careful than we are. I will not insult any particular country by picking it out, but they do exist and the right hon. Gentleman knows as well as I do who they are.
	Earlier today, we heard concerns about the common travel area and the Irish Republic, and although we do not know what the outcome will be, that issue represents a 5 million-person hole in the system. Given the value of corrupting the system, the size of the system and the fact that all the data will be in one place, people will try to corrupt the system andI hate to say thisthe likelihood is that they will succeed. The right hon. Gentleman has asked a good question, but his argument is not right.

Lynne Featherstone: Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the disproportionate basis on which people from different communities are likely to be stopped, searched and therefore have their information accessed on the database is another good reason not to introduce such a database? And does he know whether the Minister has conducted a proper race impact assessment and, if so, have the proposals been changed?

David Davis: I am not aware that such a race impact assessment has been conducted. The hon. Lady is right that the system will be disproportionate in a variety of interesting ways, and it will disproportionately affect minority communities in some respects. Early adopters on the database are likely to be the least risky people. A person who poses a risk to the country at large will not want to sign up for a passport or any other documentation, if they can avoid doing so. For example, an illegal immigrant would clearly not want to sign up for such documentation, and many others would take the same approach.
	It looks like the system will not bite for the best part of a decade, so it will not do any good for the best part of a decade. Why are the Government breaking their manifesto pledge to make the first stage voluntary and insisting on this covert, creeping compulsion? The answer is simple: they know that this expensive, cumbersome system will never be popular once it is up and running, and they will therefore contrive every method possible to ensure that the massive majority of the population are already signed up, whether they like it or not, before the question of compulsion is put before Parliament again. Whether the method involves a super-affirmative order or whether it involves primary legislation, 70 to 80 per cent. of the population will be in the system before we re-examine the matter, which will be presented as an inevitable development.

John Bercow: Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is a question of not only numbers signed up, but money spent? Will he accept that the Government, who should be candid enough to acknowledge this fact, are seeking to create a ratchet whereby so much money is spentwisely or unwisely; for good or illthat the point will come when Ministers have the temerity to argue that not proceeding to compulsion would waste that money?

David Davis: My hon. Friend is exactly right. The Government want us to face an argument of inevitability. They will say, We have got a huge sunk cost. The vast majority of the population is on the system alreadywhy not make it everybody? That will seem eminently practical and sensible, but the benefits will not have accrued, because, as Ministers know, if the ID cards system is going to do many of the things that the Government claim, it must be compulsorycarrying an ID card will probably have to be compulsory, too, but we can address that point in five years' time.
	Passports will ensure that some 80 per cent. of the population is on the register in a decade. I was mildly surprised by the Home Secretary's remarks about driving licences, because the Government tried to take the power to recall all driving licences in the Road Safety Bill. The Home Secretary has said that that was not to allow further designation for ID cards, and I must believe him, but the Lords did not believe him, and they blocked the measure. That is not an issue now, although it might have been, but it is another reason not to allow the Government the right to enforce this creeping compulsion.
	There is a final, serious matter of principle. The way in which the Government have gone about trying to deliver this Bill is of a piece with what they have done to other hard-won rights of the British people. The ID card will make no difference to serious security issues for at least a decade, if ever, and the difference may not be positive, too. Before then, this House will make a serious and considered decision about compulsion. Let us not allow ourselves to discover at that point that we have inadvertently already made that decision. Let us not discover too late that we have sleepwalked into the surveillance state. Let us protect the British citizen's right to choose, and this House's eventual right to decide. Let us reject the Government amendment this afternoon.

John Denham: I shall begin by saying something that will comfort the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis). Again, I shall quote the Home Affairs Committee report on ID cards, which addressed the question of the use of language:
	For most people, to travel abroad and to drive are fundamentals. It cannot be argued that these would be given up voluntarily. To describe the first phase of the Government's proposals as 'voluntary' stretches the English language to breaking point.
	Ministers have got themselves into a little bit of unnecessary difficulty through that choice of word.
	In reality, people must accept that if they want a passport, they will have to go on to the national identity register, and the question is whether that is justifiable. As a supporter of ID cards and the national identity register, it seems to me that that approach is right and sensible. It would be nonsense to go through the entire process of collecting one set of biometric data and storing it with all the relevant background information for the purpose of issuing a passport, and then to run an entirely separate exercise in parallel to collect slightly different biometric data and store them on a different identity register in order to have an ID card system. Running the two systems together will be far more convenient for the citizen, and it makes much more sense in terms of building a system that has integrity and security. Furthermore, it will certainly be far more cost- effective. Moving towards ID cards and a national identity register means that using passports as a designated document is the sensible way forward.
	To be fair, the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden spent most of his speech attacking the principle behind the measure rather than the use of the word voluntary. He attempted to argue that we should not require people to go on to the national identity register as part of the process of obtaining a passport because the risks posed by the national identity register are so immense that it is unjustifiable to ask people to go on to it. That basic contention lies at the heart of the entire debate about ID cards, but those fears are misplaced.
	The scheme's opponents have failed to make substantive arguments. I know that it is slightly bad form to quote one's own intervention and the response to it, but I shall do so on this occasion. When the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden made a powerful point about the dangers of bringing different databases together, I asked him to name two pieces of data that are kept separately and that he thinks it would be dangerous to bring together. Hon. Members will have noted that he could not name two pieces of data that we should not put together in one place. He mentioned medical records and criminal records, which have nothing to do with ID cards, and names and national insurance numbers are stored together on plenty of databases. He could not establish what would go wrong if two particular pieces of data were stored together.

Ben Wallace: Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the register will contain extra detail that is not currently held on other databases, such as the footprint of questions put to the new database and when someone last went to a doctor? It will also contain NHS numbers and criminal record numbers, which will be taken from one database and put on another.

John Denham: The hon. Gentleman has not made the case why different bits of data should not be brought together.

David Davis: When the right hon. Gentleman raised that point, I was dealing with amusing heckling. I shall take up his point in a way that may embarrass my party, but never mind. A previous Chancellorhe is now Lord Lamontbecame known as our flexible friend because of one or two pieces of data in relation to a credit card. The simple point is that it allows fishing expeditions, which people undertake if they are trying to embarrass somebody or to find something that puts them in a difficult position. The easier those fishing expeditions are, the more dangerous it is to the privacy of the individual.

John Denham: Let me say in passing that two of the suggestions made by Opposition Members about what would on the database are incorrect. The right hon. Gentleman says that there will be fishing expeditions. That is to assume something unjustifiablethat nothing in the law that we are being invited to pass, nothing in the system of regulation, and nothing in the system of oversight can ever be expected to work. He conjured up an image of huge numbers of individuals with a right of access to the database. First, that is not true. Secondly, those people who will be allowed access to the database for the purposes of crime prevention, for example, would be able to do so if they were not able to access that information in another form. Given that all the information is already on a Government database and can be accessed under existing crime-fighting powers, the Bill gives no significant increase in access to the people about whom the right hon. Gentleman is worrying.
	The only new issue that arises is that of the audit trail about an individual registration. That would be subject to exactly the same controls that exist on access to information that is already on the Government database. Throughout this debate, not only today but previously, I have struggled to understand exactly why access to that audit trail by proper and regulated authorities for the purposes of crime prevention is seen as massively detrimental to the interests of the individual. It is not; in fact, it is just as likely to be of value to the individual. Let us take as an example the hypothetical situation of a Chancellor of the Exchequer who had been accused of shopping in Thresher's when he wished to say that he had been in no such place. In those circumstances, the individual would have had access to the audit trail and been able to prove that he had been nowhere near Thresher's on that occasion. The audit trail is of far more advantage to the individual than to any other authority.

Frank Cook: Is it not true to say that these checks can be done only with the cardholder's prior consent?

John Denham: That is right, with the exception that is always there in law of the detection and prevention of crime, which is subject to its own specific regulation and oversight. It is well established in this House, and has been on many occasions in relation to many sources of information, that we have given the police and the security services access to that information for the purposes of fighting crime and defeating terrorism. The Bill introduces no new principle and no new threats to the individual.

John McDonnell: My right hon. Friend is going through the arguments in a cogent way that will convince many people. We may be able to introduce more and more safeguards into the system through encryption and so on, but the key issue on legislation of such importance is to ensure that we have the confidence of the British public. We can do that in two waysby putting it to them in a general election in which they can vote for that system, or by having them buy into the system through personal decisions. When we put it to them in a general election, they voted for a voluntary system. The Bill does not allow them to have that, and the only way in which we can give it to them is by an individual decision on a voluntary basis, as the amendment suggests.

John Denham: As my hon. Friend knows, manifestos are funny things. I thought that I had read the education section fairly carefully until I read the education White Paper. One is never quite sure what is really in the manifesto until a few months later.
	It has been pretty clear throughout that the Government intended to link the issuing of ID cards and the establishment of a national identity register to passports. That has never been a secret. It was clear at the time of our Select Committee report, when we were working on the assumption that driving licences would also be included. There has been no deception of the public. No danger is brought about by bringing the data together.

William Cash: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

John Denham: I should like to make a little progress.
	Furthermore, no significant danger has been introduced by access to audit trails, given that that is supervised. The third question is whether the database can, by virtue of its very existence, be hacked into by people trying to get a list of identities that they can use to mimic or fake them in some way. Of all the issues in the debate, that needs to be taken the most seriously. When our Committee heard a wide variety of technical evidence on these questions, I was convinced that there are no insuperable or unknown technical obstacles to designing the database in such a way as to make it free from such attack. There will be a huge responsibility on Home Office Ministers and their team to get those technical questions right, but it is an entirely resolvable problem.

Chris Mole: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the fundamental assumption that underlies the errors in people's conclusions about this is that there is two-way traffic? From the majority of verification points, people do not have access to the data in the central database. They are able only to submit data about the individual concerned to the central database and get back a yes or no confirmation as regards their identity. It is wrong to conclude that those access points create weakness in the security of the system.

John Denham: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. To listen to some speakers, one would think that the national identity register will run live, rather like national rail inquiries on the internet, so that one can go in and access information. That is not how it will operate. There will not be lots of live access points with people interacting with the system and being able, for example, to get viruses into it.
	It would be possible to say, For the elimination of all doubt, let's not do this. That leads to the conclusion that it would be better not to have a Revenue and Customs computer or any other type of computerised system that could allow for hacking and destruction. The gains of this system, to our society and to individuals, vastly outweigh the risks that can be identified.

David Taylor: Is it not an heroic act of faith to suggest that few, if any, weaknesses can be attributed to the likely design of the system? The history of IT systems in the past 20 to 30 years is one of determined and ingenious individuals circumventing and overcoming such low obstacles as might prevent their being hacked into. That will not give much reassurance to potential Winston Smiths.

John Denham: I am one of thoseI am sure that there are many others in this Housewho carries out most of his banking transactions on the internet. The risks to individuals and society of having any type of internet exchange of financial information are vastly greater than anything to do with a national identity register, yet we have not banned internet banking. The vast majority of problems have arisen from individuals volunteering their own information to fraudsters. The existence of a huge variety of very sensitive internet applications that are used with great confidence across the world, day in, day out, should give us the confidence to believe that this important project can be delivered and will work.

Alistair Carmichael: I begin by picking up a point that theright hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham) made. I hope that I do not misrepresent him when I say that I understood him to argue that allthe information exists on various Government databases and it is therefore not objectionable to bring it together, and that exceptional access to it would be allowed only for the prevention and detection of crime. If I have misrepresented him, he can intervenehe does not wish to do that, so I presume that I have not.
	I have never been one to allow the facts to get in the way of a good rant, but when I listened to the right hon. Gentleman I had occasion to examine the terms of the Bill. Clause 1(3) sets out the statutory purposes for the maintenance of the national identity register, including:
	the provision of a secure and reliable method for registrable facts about such individuals to be ascertained or verified wherever that is necessary in the public interest.
	The public interest is defined in subsection (4). It includes
	the purposes of the prevention or detection of crime.
	However, it also includes
	the interests of national security . . . the purposes of the enforcement of immigration controls . . . the purposes of the enforcement of prohibitions on unauthorised working or employment; or
	the widest example
	the purpose of securing the efficient and effective provision of public services.
	It is difficult to imagine what would not be covered under the latter.

John Denham: The hon. Gentleman is not distinguishing between the elements of the Bill that allow access to audit trails without the individual's permissioncrime fightingand other aspects, under which individuals can use their identity cards, for example, to identify themselves to use a public service. It is dangerous to run the two elements together as though they are the same.

Alistair Carmichael: The right hon. Gentleman cannot get away from the basis on which access is to be administered. It clearly goes beyond what he outlined.

John McDonnell: My right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham) made a comparison with internet banking. That is entered into on a voluntary basis, with a voluntary acceptance of potential risk. Registration will not be done on a voluntary basis and the acceptance of risk, which could be dramatic, is not voluntary.

Alistair Carmichael: The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point, to which I cannot add. Given the constraints of time, I do not intend even to try. However, he brings me neatly to my first substantive point, which deals with compulsion.
	My noble Friend Lord Phillips of Sudbury put the matter nicely when he moved the amendment in another place. He stated:
	We seek to replace compulsion by voluntarism. Citizens should not be forced to have ID cards. Compulsion is far too often resorted to by the modern state. That comes from an intensely managerial culture in which regulation rules. That sits uneasily with fundamental rights such as privacy and voluntarism. This Bill is an authentic clash between such rights and managerial efficiency.[Official Report, House of Lords, 23 January 2006; Vol. 677, c. 957.]
	That outlines well the divide between the Government and us on the amendment.
	I must also reinforce the point of the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) about the Labour manifesto commitment, which is worth reading into the record. It states:
	We will introduce ID cards, including biometric data like fingerprints, backed up by a national register and rolling out initially on a voluntary basis as people renew their passports.
	The Home Secretary has already accepted today that the process of designating documents, especially passports, brings with it an element of compulsion. That is why the Government want to include the word must in the Bill, while we believe that it should be may. I do not understand how the Government can square that circle or perceive their comments today as anything other than a blatant breach of their manifesto commitment.
	Approximately 85 per cent. of the population hold passports. If we are to link the identity register and identity cards with the renewal of passports, when we pass the second Billwhich we shall eventually be allowed to discussthere will be, as the hon. Member for Buckingham (John Bercow) said, an irresistible momentum behind compulsion. The argument will be presented that we already hold the information and that it would therefore be such a waste if we did not move tocompulsion. The designated documents mean compulsion by the back door.
	I am worried by the way the Government have tried to conflate the sensible case for biometrics for passportswhen we debated the matter in Committee, we stressed that we did not object to thatand the use of biometrics for identity cards. There are several important distinctions to be drawn. First, passports will hold considerably fewer biometrics than are proposed for identity cards. Passports will not be subject to the same footprint through the database that is to be attached to the national identity register. A much wider range of information will be held under schedule 1 on the identity register than that held in relation to a passport.
	Schedule 1 provides for personal information, including name,
	other names by which he is or has been known . . . date of birth . . . place of birth . . . gender . . . the address of his principal place of residence in the United Kingdom . . . the address of every other place in the United Kingdom where he has a place of residence.
	The identifying information includes the biometrics and the photograph. Provision is made for residential status and no fewer than 13 personal reference numbers, which include
	any driver number given to him by a driving licence.
	Surely that cannot be described as akin to the limited information that is held in relation to a passport.

William Cash: Schedule 1(4)(l) also provides for
	the number of any designated document which is held by him and is a document the number of which does not fall within any of the preceding sub-paragraphs.
	The list is almost endless.

Alistair Carmichael: Yes. One almost feels that the great expression, for the avoidance of doubt, which featured in our debate on the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill, should precede that provision. It is a lovely piece of Sir Humphrey double-speak.

William Cash: It is reminiscent of the Ashbury railway case.

Alistair Carmichael: The hon. Gentleman begins citing case law, but I shall resist his blandishments.
	The Government sought to justify the measure by claiming that it will enable us to catch up with other European Union countries. Twenty other EU countries have ID cards. In 10 countries they are compulsory, and in the other 10 they are voluntary.

Ben Wallace: Is the hon. Gentleman as shocked as me that, contrary to the Home Secretary's assurances that Irish citizens will have to hold an ID card or be on the register, the Irish Nationality and Citizens Act 1956 and the Ireland Act 1949 mean that Ireland's citizens in the UK are treated as UK citizens in UK law and will therefore not be required to hold an ID card or appear on the register?

Alistair Carmichael: The hon. Gentleman is more easily shocked than me if that shocks him. However, he describes the position of the Irish citizen more clearly than any Government Front Bencher, so I commend him for hat.
	It is worth reminding ourselves of what we compel people to do by insisting on a compulsory link between a designated document and an identity card. We are not considering an innocuous little piece of plastic, but everything that underpins it: the national identity register and its database and the occasions, places and purposes for which it is used. The Government are trying to foist on us a position whereby we will leave a footprint of where we have been, what we have done and why we have had to access public services.

Kate Hoey: The hon. Gentleman referred to the Labour manifesto, which made it clear that identity cards were to be voluntary. Does he agree that if the Government were so confident about the success of ID cards they would agree to their being voluntary? If they were so good, and if everyone could see how wonderful they were, everyone would sign up for one. Surely this creeping compulsion shows that, despite the Home Office having wanted to introduce them for years, Ministers do not feel very confident about them deep down.

Alistair Carmichael: I am beginning to wish that we had voted against the programme motion, because 90 minutes is clearly insufficient time for a debate such as this. However, the hon. Lady has done me a service, in that she has made my last point for me. If everything that the Government claim about identity cards were true, they would not need to be compulsory because everyone would want them. Clearly it is not, and clearly they do not. That is why the Government want compulsion.

Martin Linton: People listening to this debate might be in danger of getting a little confused, because the first 90 minutes have been taken up with a debate about whether the cards should be voluntary or compulsory. I agree that we were right to accept the earlier Lords amendment to require separate primary legislation on this issue. Constitutionally, we now know where we are, and that is a much better way of doing things.
	This amendment is also about the argument between compulsory versus voluntary. Here, however, I agree with the Government. I oppose the Lords amendment because it is important to preserve the requirement for the decision on the national identity register to be taken at a later stage. In the short term, very little will happen. When we apply for a passport, we already have to give our name, address, date and place of birth, sex and nationality. Those six pieces of information are then stored on a separate database known as the national insurance register. I waited for the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) to reveal why the provisions would have the effect of making secret information more accessible. I waited in vain, however, because he never came to the point.
	The Government already have many databases that contain that same basic information. The electoral register, for example, contains our names and addresses. The Inland Revenue possesses the names and addresses, and many more details, of 40 million people, and the national insurance register contains the details of 60 million people. I believe that eBay has a database of 157 million users.

Ben Wallace: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Martin Linton: I will not give way, because we are reaching the end of the debate. The key question is whether the existence of these databases gives anyone unauthorised access to confidential information, and the answer totally eluded the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden. We never discovered from him how that could happen.

Lynne Jones: Will my hon. Friend give way?

Martin Linton: As my hon. Friend knows, we have only four minutes left in this debate, and I have not intervened on others.
	A voluntary ID register makes no more sense than voluntary bus fares or voluntary juries. The huge benefits that will come to the citizen, to the Government and to private industry with the introduction of ID cards are to a large extent dependent on it being compulsory for everyone's name to be on the national identity register. The figures in the Home Office benefits overview show that we could draw benefits worth 1.1 billion from the existence of such a register, but that we would draw 100 per cent. of those benefits only if we had 100 per cent. take-up. With only 50 per cent. take-up, the benefits would be less than 10 per cent. of that figure. This is precisely the point that the amendment does not deal with. With a take-up of only 60 per cent., the benefits would be less than 20 per cent. Only when we pass the 80 to 90 per cent. take-up rate will the benefits of this legislation really come to us.
	The lion's share of the benefits, in financial terms, will come from fraud prevention and the reduced cost of crime. Only a small benefit will come, in the earlier stages, from the greater efficiency of public services and from more effective control of work permits and visas. If we had a low take-up, we would see significant benefits only in public services and in immigration, although the savings would still be well worth having to organisations such as the Criminal Records Bureau, the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, the Department for Education and Skills and the immigration and nationality directorate.
	To reduce fraud, however, we need everyone to be in the scheme. As long as we are allowed to present alternative forms of identification, such as utility bills, the people who intend to commit fraud will do just that. It is ironic that hon. Members who were concerned about the weakness of List 99 and the sex offenders register should have missed the point that those weaknesses are in large part due to the lack of any way of being sure of someone's identity. The Criminal Records Bureau has estimated that the time needed to carry out a check would come down from four weeks to three days if we had ID cards. More importantly, the result of that check would be much more secure.
	The other point that we have missed is that the largest beneficiary of a full ID card system would be not the Government but the citizen. When someone has their identity stolen, they do not usually lose out financially. It is the bank that loses, and passes the cost on to other users. According to the Home Office, the benefit of ID cards would amount to about 420 million for the citizen, and a similar amount to industry, but only about 240 million to public services. We have only to consider the costs and benefits of the ID card system to see that

It being one and a half hours after the commencement of proceedings on Lords amendment No. 16, Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Order [this day], put forthwith the Question already proposed from the Chair.
	The House divided: Ayes 310, Noes 279.

Question accordingly agreed to.
	Lords amendment No. 16 disagreed to.
	Mr. Speaker then proceeded to put forthwith the Question necessary for the disposal of business to be concluded at that hour.

Clause 8
	  
	Issue etc. of ID cards

Lords amendment: No. 22.
	Motion made, and Question put, That this House disagrees with the Lords in the said amendment.[Joan Ryan.]
	The House divided: Ayes 310, Noes 259.

Question accordingly agreed to.
	Lords amendment No. 22 disagreed to

Clause 1
	  
	The National Identity Register

Lords amendment: No. 1, page 1, line 3, at beginning insert
	Subject to section (Commencement: report on costs and benefits),
	The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Andy Burnham):
	I beg to move, That the House disagrees with the Lords in the said amendment.

Mr. Speaker: With this we may discuss Lords amendments Nos. 68 to 70, Government motions to disagree thereto and amendment (a) in lieu thereof.

Andy Burnham: I should say at the beginning that the Government support amendment (a), tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Frank Dobson) and, should the need arise, the Government will move it.
	The amendments cover the requirement for openness in relation to the costs of the identity card scheme. That is a legitimate request, with which I shall deal head on. It is of course desirable that as much information as possible about the scheme is placed in the public domain. However, it is true to say that that aim has to be balanced by the need to secure best value in an open procurement process and to adhere to the guidelines for such Government procurement.
	We have two legitimate aims, therefore, that pull in opposite directions. We have to seek to resolve that tension and strike a balance. We believe that my right hon. Friend's amendment does just that, with subsection (4) being the crucial element. By contrast, the alternative amendment passed by the other place is heavy-handed and prescriptive and would not allow us to achieve best value in the procurement process. It would of course also be something of a precedent to accept that amendment and we will resist it.
	We have made available a full account of the costs of the identity card scheme and we are pleased this evening to account again for the costs and explain them in some detail. We touched on the issue earlier in the debate, and we heard some inaccurate and misleading comment designed to undermine public confidence in the scheme. Some even claimed that a card would cost as much as 300. I would not pay 300 for an identity card, and nor would I expect my constituents to do so. Those costs, I am pleased to say, are completely wrong.

Ben Wallace: Does the Minister agree that his   comments would carry much more weight if No. 10 Downing street had not published the somewhat fatuous report on the 1.7 billion cost of identity fraud that was pulled apart by experts on both sides of the argument?

Andy Burnham: The hon. Gentleman should be cautious about rubbishing the figures that were placed in the public domain, not by No. 10 Downing street but by the identity fraud steering committee, which works under the auspices of the Home Office but brings together a range of partners from the public and private sectors and is engaged in a serious attempt to tackle a real threat. I am sure that the figure placed in the public domain underestimates the true cost of identity fraud. The hon. Gentleman is wrong to suggest that it was a cynical exercise. The group has been meeting for some time and its methodology and the breakdown of its figures were placed in the Library. I urge the hon. Gentleman to look at the detail if he has not done so already.

Philip Hollobone: Does the Minister recognise the public's concern that the costs of the scheme might be better spent on more police officers on the beat and tighter border controls? There is natural suspicion that the costs of any Government procurement scheme, especially one involving IT, are likely to exceed the amount stated, not fall below it.

Andy Burnham: I have two points to make in response. First, it is not a case of either/or. The hon. Gentleman will knowthe point has been made many timesthat this Government have invested significantly in police on the beat and we are proud to have done so. His main pointand a mistake made by the Opposition throughout the debateis the suggestion that a pot of funds is sitting in the Home Office to pay for the entire scheme and that it can easily be directed to another Home Office priority. The whole premise is that the basis of funding the scheme will be the same as for passports: the costs of running the passport service are predominantly recovered from the fees people pay for their passport. That principle will continue when we introduce a biometric ID card system.

Edward Garnier: May I draw Members' attention to the Minister's letter of 7 February, which was sent only to Labour Members? In attacking the London School of Economics' report on the costs of the project, he said:
	The LSE also allocated an inflated 1 billion marketing budget and assumed a much higher loss/theft rate than is the case for existing documents.
	Was not the Minister aware when he wrote the letter that the Government had received a denial of that point on 5 August 2005 when the LSE responded to the Government response to the LSE report? Surely he was aware that the LSE status report issued in January 2006 stated that it had made no such estimate. Would he care to correct that erroneous allegation, which continues the line of ad hominem attacks that he and his colleagues have made on Simon Davies and his colleagues?

Andy Burnham: It is entirely legitimate for the Government to point out what we believe were flaws in the LSE report

Edward Garnier: rose

Andy Burnham: I am answering the hon. and learned Gentleman's point, so perhaps he could give me a moment to do so.
	I am pleased that the hon. and learned Gentleman has attached himself to the parliamentary Labour party mailing listI do not know what his intentions are. He will see from my letter that, based on our scheme, the main cost driver assumed by the LSE is incorrect. The LSE assumed a five-year refresh rate for biometric enrolment, but there is no evidence to support that as the main assumption for the schemethe major basis on which we have challenged the LSE figures, because they would add enormous costs to the scheme.
	I do not want the debate to go over the ground of the LSE report. I will answer some of the points raised in it later.

Edward Garnier: Can we get a straight admission from the Minister that the allegation in his letter, that the LSE allocated an inflated 1 billion marketing budget, is wrong? If that is true, where does it appear in any of the LSE documents? There is no point in the Minister trying to avoid the point: is it true or not? He has been told by the LSE that it is not true, so why does not he tell the House what he thinks?

Andy Burnham: I do not intend to debate the detail of the LSE report. If I need to correct anything, I shall write to the hon. and learned Gentleman, but I can say with confidence that the LSE figures have moved around somewhat. In a discussion with me in the House, one of the authors of the report said publicly that they would have to revise downwards some of the figures. It has been quite hard to keep track of the some of the LSE figures, but I do not want the debate to be purely about that point.

Martin Linton: Will my hon. Friend give way?

Andy Burnham: I want to make some progress.
	My two key points are, first, that the costs of the scheme are both realistic and affordable for the Government and the individual citizen and, secondly, that it is worth making the investment now because Britain does not have a high-standard, comprehensive system of identification. We have published the expected costs of issuing ID cards, and the current best estimate of the annual average running costs of issuing ID cards and passports to British citizens is 584 million, from the start of the ID scheme, including the cost of compiling and running the national identity register.

David Drew: I am pleased that the figure has been made public, but does my hon. Friend accept that some of us still have concerns about the cost? The biggest problem is the cost of the IT infrastructure. We do not want another Rural Payments Agency problem, where the IT was renegotiated as the scheme was being introduced, so it would be helpful if the Government said that, rather than hiding behind commercial confidentiality, they are prepared to share such information with the House so that we can be sure that the IT consultants do not run off and make a bomb out of the proposal. Does my hon. Friend agree?

Andy Burnham: It is precisely because we do not want people running off and making a bomb at the expense of the taxpayer that we are proceeding as we are. As I said earlier, we recognise the tension between running, and getting best value from, a procurement process and the need to be open and accountable by putting as much information as possible in the public domain. Those are two conflicting aims, but in the amendment tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras we begin to see a way to resolve them. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) inasmuch as we want to put information into the public domain as early as possible, but without fettering our ability to secure the cost and keep it down when we go to market. A person would not ordinarily say how much they had to spend before trying to obtain the best price from a supplier, and that principle holds good for this exercise.

Mark Todd: It may help my hon. Friend to learn that when I questioned IT professionals who are hoping to take part in the tender, they said that the LSE figures were entirely speculative, bearing in mind the degree of knowledge about the project, but they added that the Government's were too. There is no proper basis for estimating such a project without much greater knowledge about its purpose and its specification. Does my hon. Friend agree?

Andy Burnham: I note my hon. Friend's point about the LSE figures. On the Government's figuresthe main thrust of his questionhe will know that we commissioned an independent assessment from KPMG. It looked in detail at the business case for the scheme and concluded, in an independent summary that we placed in the Library, that it was robust and appropriate. We have not opened up the whole report to Members, so some of the details will have to be taken on trust, but I can assure my hon. Friend that that was KPMG's conclusion and I urge him to refer to the document, which suggests that our figures have some validity.

Glenda Jackson: Will my hon. Friend set out how the Government are approaching the commissioning of the enormous contract for a database that must be pushing at the envelope of IT knowledge? The Government's track record in commissioning computer-based technology is disastrousas was that of the previous Governmentso how are they approaching it differently to ensure that we do not experience, as we have in the past, vast overruns and increases in expenses in a programme that is not fit for purpose?

Andy Burnham: My hon. Friend is right to note that the project is a major undertaking and will require significant sums, and I shall set out in detail how much we expect to spend. I have two points in response to her question. If we said that because there had been problems in the past we would never embrace new technology and never make significant investment in a project that could bring improvements, that would be the wrong approach. However, I assure her that we are basing the delivery body for the scheme on that of the UK Passport Service. It had problems a few years ago, but they were not related to the introduction of the IT system, and it has since emerged as one of the highest-performing public sector organisations and is extremely well equipped to deliver the scheme cost-effectively.

John Gummer: I am not against identity cards in principle, so I ask this question in kindness, rather than anything else. Does the Minister agree that there has been a pretty long trail of failures by all Governments in implementing IT and that this Government have had a number of such failures, which he perhaps underestimates? Has he conducted an inquiry into those failures? Will he place in the Library the list of lessons that the Government have learned from the failures of the past, so that we can estimate whether they will be able to handle what is, on all accounts, a very large order of magnitude in changed technology?

Andy Burnham: I hesitate to ask whether the right hon. Gentleman has experience of such matters. Governments of both colours have had negative experience in that regard, but it is precisely because of some of the past procurement problems that the Office of Government Commerce gateway process has been established. As he will know, that involves private sector expertise at every stage of a major project to consider its readiness and whether the associated risks are adequately addressed. The scheme has been through a series of gateway reviews, and I assure him that that directly builds on experience learned from past failures. Some of the people involved in the process have been involved in other major public and private sector procurement. [Interruption.] Obviously, they have clearly learned the lessons and know exactly what they are doing now. The serious point is that the scheme is being closely examined, and we seek to make as much information from the gateway process available as possible. I take on board the right hon. Gentleman's point.

Brooks Newmark: I am not satisfied that the Minister has answered the question asked by the hon. Member for Hampstead and Highgate (Glenda Jackson). The tax credit fiasco suffered from enormous IT overruns, and when the Government tried to fix them the costs went up even further. I wonder whether the Minister still shares the Home Secretary's confidence that he will not only hit the target of about 540 million, but beat it?

Andy Burnham: I do share that confidence. Let me develop the point that I made in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Highgate (Glenda Jackson). It is not correct to say glibly that the scheme is directly comparable to the Child Support Agency. They are not analogous, and we are describing a very different function. Before hon. Members run away with the idea that the scheme is intended to encompass everything, let me say that it is a basic identification scheme that will hold biometric details.
	Let me refer the House to the experience of the United States since 11 September. The US has introduced biometrics into its immigration system pretty much from a standing start, and they are now used for all visas around the world and for people going through US customs control. Such schemes are workable. They are in use today. The British Government are increasingly using biometrics. We have progressively introduced biometrics into visas, and that process is beginning to be implemented around the world. A biometric is being used in applicant registration cards for asylum seekers, and we are seeking to build on such relevant experience.

Mark Todd: May I draw my hon. Friend's attention to the need for greater transparency, which might provide reassurance? He referred to the fact that only a summary of the KPMG report has been published. It would certainly be helpful if the whole report were published, and commercial confidentiality would not be affected in doing so. The OGC gateways could readily be disclosed, at least in summary form. It is welcome that the Government have commissioned a concept viability report on the project, and it could also be made available. I have yet to see it, and it would have been useful to have seen it before the debate.

Andy Burnham: I take on board my hon. Friend's general point. I hope that, after this evening's vote, the discussion will change from one about whether or not the scheme should happen to one about how it will happen. I think that that important distinction will quickly take root in people's minds. I embrace my hon. Friend's point of view. It would not be right to proceed with a scheme of such national significance with any sense of a culture of secrecy. We will seek to put as much information as possible into the public domain, but as he will understand from his experience before first coming to the House, that must be balanced by a requirement to secure best value from what will be a major procurement process. We need to keep those two things in mind.
	On independent scrutiny, an independent project assurance group is reviewing cost, project management and IT implementation and bringing together a range of experienced stakeholders. The biometric assurance group, chaired by the Government's chief scientist, Sir David King, will review that specific aspect. So there is independent scrutiny, but I take on board my hon. Friend's point that we should seek to make more information available as and when we can.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. When the Minister turns to speak to his hon. Friend, he is not only turning his back on the occupant of the Chair, but, more importantly perhaps, taking his voice away from the microphones, which makes it very difficult for the Official Report. I hope that he will bear that in mind.

Andy Burnham: I certainly will, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and I apologise for any inconvenience.
	I want to stress to the House that the 584 million cost of issuing passport and identity cards includes all the existing costs of issuing passports through the United Kingdom Passport Service, together with the developments that will be needed over the next few years to introduce biometric passports, starting with passports incorporating facial images and moving to biometric fingerprints. About 70 per cent. of the cost of issuing identity cards, alongside passports, is attributable to the introduction of biometric passports. Let me put that figure into perspective.
	The figure of 584 million includes the baseline figures for the operation of the UK Passport Service, which in 200607 is expected to be some 397 million. That is the organisation's running cost in carrying out its core responsibility of issuing passports to the British public.   Essentially, the difference between those two figuresabout 200 millionis what we are debating. That is the extra cost that the identity card scheme will place on the public, and it is the set-up costs of establishing the scheme, which were mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud.

Stewart Hosie: The figure of 200 million represents the non-passport element of the scheme, but is the Minister convinced that that will be the total required to tackle insurance fraud, payments fraud, banking and building society fraud and finance and leasing fraud? It seems a rather small sum if it is intended to tackle all 1.7 billion fraud identified by the Government.

Andy Burnham: I am making the point that that figure relates to the budget for issuing biometric passports and identity cards to the public. The perspective that needs to be taken is that ID cards do not account for the whole of that amount. The hon. Gentleman makes my point partly for me: 1.7 billion is the annual cost to the UK of identity fraud, so the benefits case begins to stack up for the scheme.
	I will summarise the additional costs over and above those of biometric passports that the scheme would place on the Government, as shown in the regulatory impact assessment. First, the costs include covering the whole resident population aged 16-plus, rather than just the 80 per cent. of British citizens who will have passports by 2008. Secondly, they include recording, matching and storing three types of biometric informationface, fingerprint and irisrather than one, which is the current standard required for the first generation of biometric passports. Thirdly, they include providing an online identity verification service that can validate ID cards and other identity inquiries for user organisations in the public and private sectors. That is what we are talking about this evening, and it is important to apply that perspective to the scale of the costs.

Lynne Jones: The current passport application support system is a 10-year private finance initiative and, as my hon. Friend said, that must be part of the 397 million for the Passport Service's running costs. Is the 584 million for both capital and revenue costs? Will it be a similar sort of PFI scheme?

Andy Burnham: My hon. Friend asks a fair question. The 584 million relates to the cost in its totality of issuing biometric passports and ID cards and, crucially, of enrolling people. That is where the bulk of the costs of the process would be. It would be an annual cost that the expanded Passport Service would need. She is right to suggest that it is possible that payment for some of the set-up costs of the scheme could be delayed into the running costs of the scheme. That would be a way of financing the scheme that would require the private sector to fund the scheme up front, and the costs would be recovered over a longer period. Those would, quite properly, be issues for the procurement process. Obviously, we will seek to secure the best deal for the taxpayer when we make the decision.

Lynne Jones: Is my hon. Friend saying that if it is not a PFI scheme, which would have an annual running cost, there will be an additional capital cost to begin with that is revenuised into the 584 million? What proportion of the 584 million is for the operation of the verification scheme?

Andy Burnham: I will be honest with my hon. Friend. Some of these issues have not been decided yet. They will be decided when the procurement phase gets going properly. It is true that there are up-front set-up costs at the start of the scheme that fall to the Home Office. As I have explained, we have decided not to make those costs available at the moment because that would prejudice our ability in the middle of the procurement process. However, I can tell my hon. Friend that those costs will be much less than the annual running costs of the scheme.

John McDonnell: Will my hon. Friend give way?

Andy Burnham: I now want to make progress.
	We have said that the costs should not be fully divulged as that will limit our ability to secure value in the market, but I can say that the annual set-up costs will be much less than the annual running costs. Our published running costs for issuing identity cards do not include future costs that may or may not be incurred by other Government Departments that will use identity cards as a way of improving their services to the public.

John McDonnell: Can my hon. Friend inform the House what calculation was made about the income from fines in relation to clauses 6 and 7 of the Bill that we have just deleted?

Andy Burnham: The answer is that no such decisions have been made at this point.
	As I was saying, the costs do not include the costs incurred by other Government Departments as a way of improving their services to the public any more than they include the costs to private sector companies, such as banks or building societies, that decide in the future to use identity cards as a way of verifying people's identity. Indeed, it would be odd if they did.
	Decisions on any future investmentfor example, in IT systems that might be required to make the best use of identity cardswill be made in due course, and not now, by the organisation concerned on the basis of a cost-benefit analysis.

Brooks Newmark: Will the Minister give way?

Andy Burnham: I shall now make some progress.
	Public services will use the scheme if there is a net benefit to them. The work that we have undertaken so far shows that there would be a net benefit for many public and private sector organisations. There may be many net benefits to a wide range of organisations and the Government have already published a high-level summary of likely future benefits in the Benefits Overview paper, a copy of which is available in the Library of the House. It suggests, we believe, conservatively that the quantified financial benefits of the identity cards scheme will range from 650 million to 1.1 billion per year once the scheme is rolled out fully. Our business case is therefore sound and, as I explained, it has been reviewed by the Office of Government Commerce gateway reviews.

Martin Linton: My hon. Friend mentioned the benefits review. The figure of 1.1 billion is for the expected benefits of the ID scheme and it includes 570 million savings from the prevention and reduction of ID fraud. Since he published those figures, he has revised his estimate of the total amount of ID fraud from 1.3 billion to 1.7 billion. Has he, or his officials, done any work to estimate whether he should therefore revise the figure for the benefits expected from the scheme?

Andy Burnham: That is a good point. Of course, we keep the benefits case under review and it changes as the scheme develops and as different organisations see how it might benefit them. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to suggest that the figure is a conservative estimate of the benefits that the scheme may bring. In fact, once the scheme is comprehensive, the benefits may be far greater.

Mark Todd: Will my hon. Friend give way?

Andy Burnham: I will give way but I want to wrap up my remarks pretty soon.

Mark Todd: My hon. Friend is being very generous. He has referred to the potential savings, but one of the puzzles in the presentation of benefits is that, although there is reference to potential private sector participation in the projectthat will be critical to delivering the savingsno companies have come forward to suggest their enthusiasm for the project or their willing participation in it. I have puzzled over that conundrum; has he?

Andy Burnham: We have been in a different phase of the scheme. The debate has been happening in the House and in another place and, in those circumstances, one might expect that people would not want to intrude on the debate. I suspect that, now the scheme has received a pretty strong endorsement from the House, there will be considerable interest from the private sector in delivering it. I would be surprised if that were not to be the case. I am confident that the capability exists within the market to deliver a high-quality scheme.

Neil Gerrard: My hon. Friend has not addressed many of his remarks to the Lords amendments and the reasons for preferring the amendment tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Frank Dobson). I note that there is a difference. The Lords amendment talks about costs and benefits whereas that of my right hon. Friend talks about costs. I suspect that taking references to benefits out of the report would not shorten it by much but, more importantly, my right hon. Friend's amendment takes out references to all Government Departments. When costs are published over the next period, it is important that we do not see just what is happening in the Home Office but what is happening in other Government Departments as well. So far, there has been no information whatever on that.

Andy Burnham: As I said a moment ago, it is a decision for those Departments how and when they engage with the creation of the national identity register. It is up to each Department to make its own business case about whether the investment that it would need to make is justified. At the point at which it makes that decision, it is a matter for it as to whether it puts that information into the public domain. I am saying to my hon. Friend that that is not a crucial element on which our costings rest. We believe that we are delivering something of public benefit that people will want to use, but such information is not a crucial plank on which the costings that we have put before the House are based.

Edward Garnier: Will the Minister give way?

Andy Burnham: I will now make some more progress.
	In order to provide even further reassurance, we commissioned KPMG and its report recognised the high quality of the outline business case and confirmed that the majority of cost assumptions were based on appropriate benchmarks and analysis from the public sector and suppliers.

Lynne Jones: Will my hon. Friend give way?

Andy Burnham: I will make progress now, but I hope to give way before I end my remarks.
	The Home Office benefits will, of course, play a significant part in realising the strategic benefits of the overall scheme, including protecting identity for the citizen, helping to reduce crime, protecting our national security, reducing the problems of illegal immigration and illegal working and enabling more efficient and effective delivery of public services. The running costs of the identity cards scheme will be funded from fees charged to passport and ID card applicants or to users of the identity verification service or from within existing departmental budgets. The fact that the bulk of the costs will be covered from fees means that, as I explained to Opposition Members earlier, without these fees, there is simply not a pot of money that could be diverted to other useswhether it is more police officers or more immigration officers.
	The published unit cost of the joint passport and identity card package is 93 for both documentsa passport and ID card. The Home Secretary has also announced that it would be affordable to issue a stand-alone identity card for a fee of about 30, or 3 a year over 10 years. The Home Office agency that will be established to issue identity cards and incorporate the existing UK Passport Service will publish corporate business plans, as well as annual accounts. The full business case will be subject to extensive reviewboth internal and Treasury reviewand challenge prior to the signing of contracts on identity cards.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard) urged me to comment on the detail of the Lords amendments. We cannot accept that there should be such an unprecedented review of the estimated costs of the identity card scheme, which would cover 10 years and the consequential costs that could fall on other Departments, before the Bill can come into effect. Such a review would not be necessary. It would be unprecedented that a Bill to fulfil a centrepiece manifesto commitment could be implemented only after a report on cost estimates had been completed, which would be the effect of Lords amendment No. 70. The logic behind the amendment is fundamentally flawed. It would appear to have been motivated by a desire to keep costs down, but, in practice, it would limit our ability to do precisely that.
	I am pleased to say that we are persuaded that we should include a commitment in the Bill to publish regularlyat six-monthly intervalsreports to be laid before Parliament, as is proposed in the new clause tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras. The measure is sensible, balanced and would not put value for money at risk. As I mentioned, subsection (4) of the new clause would allow the Home Secretary to decide to withhold information that might prejudice the procurement process.

Lynne Jones: Is it not true that the KPMG report examined cost centres that amounted to only 60 per cent. of the operating costs? Did that not leave a big hole in the assessment? If we are to have such six-monthly reports, by what mechanism may we take the decision that the costs are out of control and thus stop the scheme from going ahead?

Andy Burnham: I make it clear to my hon. Friend that KPMG had access to the scheme's full business case and that its report went into considerable detail about the scheme. It concluded that the 584 million running costs that we had published were robust and appropriate.

Lynne Jones: KPMG actually said that the methodology for determining those costs was accurate, but did not put a figure on them.

Andy Burnham: My hon. Friend has examined the information that the Home Office has put out assiduously. KPMG examined the methodology behind the entire business case in considerable detail. She is right that it considered 60 per cent. of the assumptions underlying the scheme, but it gave the figures to show that the identity cards team produced a clean bill of health.
	We are giving a commitment today on the six-monthly reports in response to the amendment tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras precisely because we want to be as open as possible and to allow people to get up-to-date information about how the scheme is progressing. Indeed, the reports could be a helpful focus for the Home Office when it ensures that the costs are kept under control. If the costs change in the way in which my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Lynne Jones) suggests, a public debate on those costs will follow. As I said to my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Mr. Todd), she can be confident that we want to put as much information in the public domain as possible, while respecting the wish to get the best possible deal for the taxpayer.
	I hope that the House will disagree to Lords amendments Nos. 1, 68, 69 and 70. As I indicated, we will support the much more sensible and workable amendment that has been tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras.

Edward Garnier: There is a growing air of scepticism in the Chamber, and the longer the Minister spoke, the more the scepticism became apparent. He said that there would not be a special pot of money to prevent Home Office funds for the police and other necessary forms of security from being spent. However, one is of course always reminded of the Prime Minister's remarks in 1995 when he criticised the then Home Secretary, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard), by saying:
	Instead of wasting hundreds of millions of pounds on compulsory ID cards as the Tory Right demands, let that money provide thousands more police officers on the beat in our local communities.
	What goes around turns around.
	The longer the Minister spoke, the more it became abundantly clear not only that members of the public do not read party political manifestos, but that Ministers do not read their own manifestos. No sensible person who read the Government's manifesto could have reached any conclusion about the natural and ordinary meaning of the words other than that the scheme would not be anything other than entirely voluntary. The likely costs of the scheme reinforce the Government's wisdom of writing such words into their manifesto.

Martin Linton: rose

Edward Garnier: I give way to the hon. Gentleman, whose copy I used to save from libel writs when he was writing for The Grauniad.

Martin Linton: The hon. and learned Gentleman might remember that when he was night lawyer on The Guardian and I was night news editor, a quote passed over his desk that read:
	If we are serious about tackling this problem, there is one obvious remedy: identity cards.
	Does he need to be prompted to recall that those were the words of the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) at the Conservative party conference?

Edward Garnier: I was paid to prevent libels, not to read the newspaper[Laughter.]

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. Perhaps we can get back to the Lords amendment under discussion.

Edward Garnier: The Minister is keen for us to be assured that we will be able to trust entirely the figures that his Department will come up with if the amendment tabled by the right hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Frank Dobson) is accepted. However, we must see the situation in the context of a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General. He had to report to the Home Office and the public at large that the Home Office had fallen down on its 200405 resource accounts. Let me pick out one or two paragraphs of the report so that hon. Members can get an idea of the context of our debate. The report also addresses the concern expressed by the hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Mr. Todd) about the absence of proper accounting assumptions in several of the Minister's assertions.
	Paragraph 10 of the report said that the Home Office accounts for last year
	contained numerous errors and internal inconsistencies. In particular, amounts relating to cash, Exchequer funding and non retainable income due to the Consolidated Fund were contradictory and did not reconcile between the different places in which they appeared in the accounts. There were also material omissions and misstatements.
	Paragraph 14 said:
	Difficulties were encountered in the transfer and cleansing of data, and staff were not trained to use the new system on a timely basis. These problems and delays, together with a lack of understanding of the new accounting system, meant that the Home Office could not use data from its new accounting system effectively to produce a cogent set of accounts to the required faster closing and statutory timetables.
	Paragraph 15 cited:
	control weaknesses within key Information Technology applications including access to the system, inadequate segregation of duties, the creation of standing data and the ability to interrogate and monitor changes made.
	It continued:
	These weaknesses made access to the database by unauthorised staff possible, representing a risk to the integrity of Adelphi data and exposing the Home Office to a greater risk of fraud and error.
	Let us go back to paragraph 11, which refers to the second draft accounts, which, unlike the first draft accountswhich were delivered rather latewere delivered only two days late. It states:
	The amounts in the revised accounts had changed significantly from the first draft. In particular nearly every major balance was markedly different. To illustrate the scale of the movements: the amount owed to the Exchequer by the Home Office of 68 million in the September draft accounts became an amount owed by the Exchequer to the Home Office of 112 million in the December draft accounts. This swing is due to major changes elsewhere in the accounts resulting in a change to the cash required by the Home Office.
	The Comptroller and Auditor General went on to say that because the Home Office was incapable of implementing its new accounting system, it had been
	unable to reconcile its cash at bank position.
	Paragraph 16 continues:
	Bank reconciliations are one of the most fundamental of all accounting controls as they enable payments, receipts and cash balances to be validated to an external source and provide assurance about debtor and creditor balances. They are also a key control for the prevention and detection of fraud.
	Other references in the Comptroller and Auditor General's report were equally impolite. In paragraphs 21 and 22 he criticised
	Poor controls and weaknesses in the audit trails maintained over the assignment of access rights; Absence of checks made against Human Resources records to ensure that new users are authorised, and leavers are removed promptly; Absence of controls to detect unauthorised access to the database
	and
	Over reliance on the Home Office contractor to undertake security checks, and a lack of effective processes to address the risks this exposes the Department to.
	If that is what the Comptroller and Auditor General says about the Home Office's accounts, it is perhaps not in the least bit surprising that other Departments have not found it convenient to hand over to the Home Office their assessments of the costs, workings, assumptions and accounting practices of their work in preparing for the great day on which the ID cards system is introduced and the national identity register comes on stream. In autumn, just before Christmas, I took the trouble to table written parliamentary questions to all the spending Departments, including the Home Office, to ask what work they had done to prepare for the national identity register and what cost estimates they had made. Even the Treasury said that it had done nothing to prepare for the great event. I suspect that it had done nothing because it did not want to become embroiled in an unquantified, unquantifiable and hugely expensive financial disaster, which the project seems likely to become.
	The least that we can expect from the Government is openness and transparency, but so far no credible reason has been advanced in this House or in the other placeI have not heard one this evening eitherfor preventing the House of Commons from having a right of scrutiny in respect of the huge sums of public money that the Government intend to spend on the ID cards system and the national identity register scheme. Whether we spend 5.84 billion over 10 years, as the Government suggest, or the 19 billion to 24 billion that the London School of Economics report suggests, makes no difference to the principle. The House must know what it is giving the Government permission to spend.
	There has been no willingness to be candid about the start-up costs, the capital costs, the transaction costs, the volumes or a host of other necessary details. I am driven to the conclusion that the Minister is not quite clear on what those concepts are. That puzzles and worries me.

Brooks Newmark: Does my hon. and learned Friend agree with the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Lynne Jones), who made some excellent points? Even if we go with the Government's assumption of 540 million, the key point is that KPMG did not stand behind that figure, butto use its words and those of the hon. Ladyit did stand behind the costing methodology and the key assumptions. KPMG recommended improvements, such as a
	sensitivity analysis, revisiting the process for estimating contingency and revisiting some cost assumptions.
	The point about a sensitivity analysis is that there is some doubt about the cost figure of 540 million that the Government have come up with and that KPMG has decided that further analysis is needed.

Edward Garnier: My hon. Friend, who comes to the matter with some years' experience in the financial services industry, is entirely right, as was the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Lynne Jones). By not giving a candid explanation, the Government are falling down in their obligations to the House and to the public. I suspect that the United States Congress got more candour out of the Pentagon on the projected costs of the stealth bomber than we are getting out of the Government on the IT project that we are discussing.

Mark Todd: May I reiterate the point that there were false expectations of the KPMG report? To be frank, there is no way in which there can be any certainty at this stage about the cost of the project. KPMG produced a fancy consultants' reportI used to commission such thingsthat says, On the one hand, this; on the other hand, that; and here's the outcome, but we cannot be anything but completely uncertain about the costs of the project. I hope that that helps the hon. and learned Gentleman.

Edward Garnier: It merely confirms that a Government who do not know what they are doing ask a distinguished firm of accountants to produce a report that answers no useful questions and we are no further on. No doubt the public were required to spend several hundreds of thousands of pounds on fees to obtain that rather unhelpful answer. In any event, the end picture is not a happy one for the Government, and it is certainly not a happy one for the taxpayers of this country.
	May I put to the Minister a point with which he did not seem to want to get to grips? The letter that he wrote on 7 February was sent only to his own colleagues and is written on House of Commons writing paper. It is interesting that it could not go out on Home Office paperfirst, because I do not imagine that the Home Office civil servants would have put their name to such a letter or allowed it to go out from their Department; and secondly, because it contains a statement that is, to put it at its lowest, highly disputable and that illustrates the Government's conduct of this debate. The Minister says in the letter to his hon. Friends:
	The LSE also allocated an inflated 1 billion marketing budget and assumed a much higher loss/theft rate than is the case for existing documents.
	The Minister either knows, or has failed to pick up the fact, that on at least three occasions the authors of the LSE report have made it clear to the Government that they made no such assumption and that they included no such figure in their report. If we were outside Parliament and if, for example, we were considering the concept of express malice in a defamation action, that letter would be evidence of it. As we are here, it does not apply.

Andy Burnham: rose

Edward Garnier: The Minister wishes to intervene. I shall accept his intervention.

Andy Burnham: I am very grateful to the hon. and learned Gentleman for accepting my intervention. To be clear about this, he will know that page 3 of the LSE report states that its costs were based on a Kable spreadsheet, which allocates 1 billion to marketing. If it wishes to correct that and say that it is not the case, I would be happy to accept that. I made that point at a meeting with LSE representatives present. On that basis, and on a number of other points, they said that they would be prepared to revise their figures downwards. That is the basis on which we make our point, and I hope that he now has clarification of that.

Edward Garnier: Let me help the Minister. The claim that he reiterates for the fourth or fifth time was first made in the Home Office response to the LSE alternative blueprint issued in July 2005, which stated that the LSE
	had estimated marketing costs of between 500 million and 1 billion.
	In the LSE reply, issued on 5 August 2005, it noted:
	The LSE report did not set out an estimate for marketing costs or indeed for any line item of that nature.
	The LSE's status report issued in January 2006 states that it had made no such estimates and even suggested in a footnote a possible explanation for the confusion. The Minister repeats the error again and again.

Andy Burnham: The hon. and learned Gentleman's colleagues have repeated in the media and in the House the original assumptions on which the report was based by giving the figure of 300 and saying that the scheme could cost up to 19 billion. Those were the original estimates that were used to justify the headlines. It is entirely appropriate for us to point out where we believe those costs to be inflated.

Edward Garnier: The debate is becoming a little sterile and circular. Where the basis of a belief is confounded, it is normally best to start believing something else.

Lynne Jones: The Minister said that the LSE revised its costs downwards because of the durability of the card, but that is not the case. It has maintained its arguments on durability, and it had a range of durability estimates. Where it has revised its costs down is in relation to the interviewing process. It originally assumed that everyone would be interviewed to get verification of their biographical details. The Government explained that that was not going to be the case. As a result, the LSE revised those costs, which are a small element of the scheme, downwards.

Edward Garnier: If I have not reset the Minister's mind, I sincerely hope that the hon. Lady has done so, but I am not at all confident that either of us will have succeeded.
	I support Lords amendment No. 70 and want to address amendment (a) in lieu, which the Government intend to support, tabled by the right hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras. The hon. Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard) made the eminently sensible point, which came straight out of Lords amendment No. 70, that it requires a detailed estimate not just of the revenue and capital costs, but of the expected benefits. He is right to say that a clause without proposed subsection (2)(b) would not be much shorter than one with it. However, it seems that the policy behind Lords amendment No. 70 is much more rigorous and candid, and it would produce a much more sensible and open understanding of the Government's financial estimates and expectations, than the amendment drafted by the right hon. Gentleman. There is nothing in Lords amendment No. 70 of which the Government should have any fear. Indeed, they have half sold the pass, in one sense, by agreeing to support the amendment.
	The Government say that the annual running costs are broadly 584 million. Multiply that by 10 and we get the 5.84 billion that people have talked about. For one year, starting in late 2008, the figure would be 584 million. The LSE report, which came out last June, put the figures over a 10 year period in a range of 10.6 billion to 19.2 billion. If the Home Office's annual figure of 584 million is representative of costs over 10 years, we get a total of 5.8 billion. The Government say that the fee will be 93 for a passport and 30 for an identity card, and they imply that the fees are driven from the 584 million cost estimate.
	So far so good, but if the LSE report is right, the fee for a passport could be between 170 and more than 300, and the cost of an ID card could rise to more than 100. As I understand it, the Government have refusedthey may have changed their mind todayto cap fees. The implication is that if costs rise, so too will fees. There is plenty of research to show that the acceptability of the ID scheme declines as its costs increase. The opinion polls started off by showing that people were greatly enthusiastic about the scheme, but that support steadily declined as the public came to realise that not only is it not going to assist in the several ways that the Government say it will, but that it will be increasingly expensive.
	The Home Office has produced some analysis in an attempted rebuttal of the LSE's figures, but the lines of attack have been about a few specific assumptions. There has not been an open and detailed debate between the LSE and the Home Office. That is a pity, to say the least. I understand that last summer the LSE found some areas on which it had overestimated costs, but also some areas in which it had underestimated costs. In the latest report, which it issued in the middle of January this year, it stands by its original estimates.
	Subject to the problem that the Home Office has in marshalling accounts of any sort, it cannot be beyond it to produce a report that contains a detailed estimate of the revenue and capital costs arising from the Bill, and it cannot be beyond it to produce a statement in the format of resource accounts, a statement of cash expenditure, and a statement setting out the material assumptions that were made in preparing the cost estimate. Nor can it be beyond the Home Office to provide the necessary subsidiary detail of the cost estimate, as set out in proposed subsection (4)(a), which states:
	the actual costs incurred in the period from 26th April 2004,
	which is when the original Bill was published,
	to the date to which the cost estimate is prepared,
	and in paragraph (b), which states:
	the costs that are estimated to be incurred during a period of 10 years after the date to which the estimate is prepared
	or such longer period as the Secretary of State may determine.
	All of those are things that accountants have to do all the time. They are all projects which, as the hon. Member for South Derbyshire said, are commissioned by business men and women in far smaller operations than the Home Office and, probably, in far bigger operations. It is not an unusual accounting exercise, and it is extraordinary that the Government are reluctant to undertake it.
	The Government say that there is a better idea in amendment (a), which the right hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras has tabled in lieu of the Lords amendments. I shall not cite the entire amendment save subsection (4), which is where the cogency of his argument falls to pieces:
	If it appears to the Secretary of State that it would be prejudicial to securing the best value from the use of public money to publish any matter by including it in his next report under this section, he may exclude that matter from that report.
	The amendment leads us down a path of wonderful expectationat last, a new Labour Government are going to be candid about their extraordinary project on identity cards and the national identity registeronly to hand over to the Secretary of State the subjective ability to pull the report if he does not find it convenient. I urge the House not to be mollycoddled into thinking that the preceding provisions will ever be delivered if subsection (4) remains part of the right hon. Gentleman's amendment.
	Even if the subject is dull and uninteresting, this is an important area of debate. The supply of Government money from public fundsfrom our constituents' pocketsshould be controlled by the House, and the Government should make clear to the House what they intend to do with our constituents' money. They have never provided us with sensible estimates of the capital or revenue costs, still less the benefits, as the hon. Member for Walthamstow implied. Now that the Government are on the retreat on compulsion under clauses 6 and 7, it is time that they went a little further and condescended to do justice not only to the House but to the wider public by providing them with access to their thinking and their methodology on those huge costs. Whether they are 5.8 billion or 20 billion over 10 years, the principle remains the same. We are entitled to knowwe have a duty to knowand the Government have an obligation to disgorge that information.

Frank Dobson: I wish to speak to amendment (a), which I tabled in lieu of Lords amendments Nos. 1, 68, 69 and 70.
	My amendment would impose a requirement on the Government to report every six months to the House on the latest estimated cost of the ID scheme, if it goes ahead. I do not support the Lords amendments because they deal exclusively with the initial estimate. History suggests that it is not the initial estimates that are the problem but the actual costs. Although the Government support my amendment, I believe that the ID scheme will not provide value for money. It will not bring an end to terrorism, and if a great deal of credit fraud affects the credit card and debit card industry it is not the taxpayer's job to help those commercial organisations. We ought to behave as the Victorians did with cheques. There was a simple law on chequesif someone did not sign the cheque and the bank paid out, the loss was the bank's, not the account holder. If we took that robust attitude on debit and credit cards we would be a lot better off. You can bet your boots that those commercial organisations, which want us to bail them out when they suffer from fraud, would quickly find a way of stopping the problem.

Several hon. Members: rose

Frank Dobson: I should like to try to make progress.
	The Government estimate that the scheme will cost 6 billion. If someone came up to a Member in the Chamber and said that they would give them 6 billion to make the country safer only to be told that ID cards would be introduced, that Member would be taken to the funny farm before they had time to draw breath. I am therefore not very keen on the proposition, to say the least.
	As I have said, it is not the initial estimate or its nature or make-up that bothers me. IT systems companies such as EDS and Siemens appear to be competing for the title of intergalactic rip-off IT merchant of the decade, and have ripped off the public and private sectors time and   again through their negligence, incompetence and stupidity, usually resulting in massive costs increases for users and huge delays. Our first job as the House of Commons, save to protect the security of the nation, is to control the raising and spending of taxpayers' money It is not overstating the case to say that a considerable number of people are doubtful about the Ministers' original estimates of the cost of the ID scheme. Nobody should suggest that that springs from deliberate deception, but all IT schemes seem to have had substantial cost overrunswith the exception, I might say, of NHS Direct, which did not involve any outside consultants, was done entirely in house, and worked.
	I am prepared to accept at face value Ministers' original estimate of about 6 billion. The problem is that if we go on as we usually do, several years hence we will happen to learn from an article leaked to a newspaper or some technical IT journal that the costs have gone into the stratosphere. My amendment will require the Government to report to the House regularly every six months, so that if huge increases are taking place, it will not be too late for us to say stop.
	The original 6 billion estimate may turn out to be correct, in which case my hon. Friend the Minister and the Home Secretary will have brought about a modern miracle. As I understand it, having demonstrated a miracle, they would qualify for canonisation as saints during their own lifetime. I think that that is unlikely and that we can expect sudden huge escalations in costs, but if we pass my amendment, we will know and be able to take action to stop it before it is too late.
	People may argue that contracts may have been let. Contracts should provide for termination if they go over certain limits and, ideally, require those who have taken the contract costs over the limit to repay the money that they have already squandered. That is going a little far these days, with the delicate organisations with which the Government deal, but it should be done nevertheless.
	I do not accept the comments of the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) about subsection (4) of my amendment, which provides for the Government to withhold not a report, but any matter in the report if it would prejudice their relations with any of the outside contractors. It would be foolish for us to require of the Government to identify that they are putting X hundred thousand, million or billion pounds in the budget for a particular contract at the point when they are seeking bids from outside organisations. That would be to the disadvantage of taxpayers, and the point of my amendment is to put taxpayers at an advantage and stop them being ripped off, as they have been so regularly and scandalously in the past.

Edward Garnier: Is not the problem that over the past year or so, and during debates in this place and the other place, the Government have refused to be open and candid, as the right hon. Gentleman thinks that they will be, on the basis of commercial confidentiality? That is ingrained in their DNA. We need to be persuaded that they have changed their mind. They say that they will support his amendment, but their whole way of life in the conduct of the Bill has been to shut up and refuse to give information because they say that that would spoil everybody's confidential commercial arrangements.

Frank Dobson: The wording is:
	If . . . it would be prejudicial to securing the best value from the use of public money.
	The Government therefore could not claim that they were securing the best value from the use of public money after some contract had been let. That covers the hon. and learned Gentleman's point.
	All that I am doing is giving the House an opportunity for us to do our job. I can commend my amendment both to those who are for identity cards and to those who are against identity cards. For those who are present who are in favour of identity cards, voting for my amendment is a vote of confidence in the accuracy of the Government's estimates and the likelihood that they will prove to be true. There cannot be anyone who is in favour of identity cards who does not believe that the true costs should not be known, and that will also have the effect of bringing pressure to bear on the IT firms to make low bids, because otherwise they will go over the top of the 6 billion figure, and it will maintain a constant pressure both on civil servants and on the contractors to keep the costs low. Those arguments are intended to appeal to those who are in favour of identity cards.
	If, like me, Members are not in favour of identity cards, instead of a vote of confidence, it is a vote of scepticism. It enables us to put the chocks under the wheel of the ID card wagon if it starts running downor running upthe hill of cost escalation. I am in what might be described as a unique situation in that I can advocate my amendment to those who are in favour and those who are against for them to pursue their totally opposing reasons and attitudes to ID cards by voting for one single amendment, and that is why I commend it to the House.

Alistair Carmichael: It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Frank Dobson), whose speech I enjoyed. He has persuaded me that there is more merit to his amendment than I had first seen in it. Had he attached to the report some sort of sanction, as exists in the Lords amendments, I would certainly have been much better disposed to his amendment. I particularly enjoyed his description of the IT companies as intergalactic swindlers, or something to that effect. The thought did just slip through my mind as to what epithets he would apply to the Ministers and civil servants who wrote the cheques and completed the contracts with these IT companies in the first place.
	It will not be lost on the House that the Minister spoke for 40 minutes. For the first 36 minutes of his speech, he did not make any reference at all to either the Lords amendment or the amendment moved by the right hon. Gentleman.

Andy Burnham: I began by addressing both amendments. I said at the beginning that the amendment of my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Frank Dobson) struck the right balance and did not fetter us in seeking best value from the market, and that the Lords amendment was unprecedented in dealing, as Mr. Speaker said, in matters of privilege. I addressed them very directly at the very beginning of my remarks.

Alistair Carmichael: That must have been a good 30 seconds out of the first 36 minutes. It was his own hon. Friend, the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard), who made the point at almost 8 o'clock that he had not yet addressed the issue. We will be able to check the record tomorrow.
	In any event, the complexity of the debate rather masks the simplicity of the issues at stake here. The point to be made here is not greatly dissimilar to that which we made in relation to compulsion, namely that if identity cards were as good as was claimed, why was compulsion necessary? If the Government's plans are as well costed and as affordable as they would have us believe, they should have nothing to fear from Lords amendment No. 70.
	Whether one takes the LSE report or the KPMG report, or whatever basis one wishes to proceed on, the basic truth of the matter is that no one really knows what the cost of identity cards will be. That is possibly why the Government prefer the amendment tabled by the right hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras to Lords amendment No. 70.
	We all know that the acceptability of ID cards to the general public declines as cost increases. The Minister has said that he would not pay 300 for an ID cardthat may yet prove to be a hostage to fortunewhich is not a point of principle, but an entirely pragmatic point relating to cost. Although he will undoubtedly have moved on to greater and higher things in government, I wonder what his position will be when and if the cost hits 300.
	The Minister has also told us that the model for financing ID cards follows that of the UK Passport Service, so it is clear that the cost will impact directly on the individual rather than its coming from the Government. Earlier, the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) used the expression plastic poll tax, which is exceptionally apposite.
	The hon. Member for Dundee, East (Stewart Hosie) has referred to the Government estimate that the cost of identity fraud and identity theft is in the region of 1.7 billion. However, that figure includes fraud associated with credit and debit cards, the bulk of which takes place online. The introduction of an identity card will make no difference to the incidence of such fraud, because biometrics are useless in relation to online transactions.
	The Minister has mentioned the UK Passport Service, but the parallel is not valid, because it does not rely on the database or the register. Furthermore, the UK Passport Service does not require the installation of a reader in every public service office, which will include every benefits office, hospital and GP surgery in England and Walesthe Scottish Executive have more sense than to install such machines. Those costs, which will be significant, make quantification even more difficult.
	The Minister has said that Lords amendment No. 70 is unprecedented and novel, and he is absolutely right. He has also said that it is outrageous that the Government should have to explain the cost of the measure before they implement it, because this is a manifesto Bill. If that is outrageous, the cost should have been in the manifesto to allow people to form a judgment at the pollsin that regard, we have seen the worst of Labour party manifestos in the past few weeks. The protection of the taxpayer, which is entirely unprecedented, is appropriate, because the whole Bill is entirely unprecedented. The Bill seeks to rewrite the relationship between the citizen and the state as we have always understood it in this country. If the Government want to take that course, the least they can do is tell us the cost of that step before they take it.
	Lords amendment No. 70 is clear. Subsection (2) specifies that the report should contain a detailed estimate of the revenue and capital costs and that a statement of expected benefits should be produced. Subsection (3) covers the extent of the cost estimates.

William Cash: I have listened to the hon. Gentleman's remarks this afternoon with great interest. Will he remind me what the Liberal Democrats did on Second Reading?

Alistair Carmichael: We voted against it. I am slightly thrown, as I cannot remember any stage at which our position has changed. I know that the hon. Gentleman's party has had a rather more interesting progress down the road to Damascus. As an elder of the kirk, I can say that there is great rejoicing in heaven and on earth at the repentance of the sinner. I welcome the conversion of the Conservative party on this point.

John Bercow: I apologise to colleagues for breaching the convention that one does not intervene a few minutes after one has entered the Chamber. Another convention is worth upholding: the principle of fairness between the parties. If memory serves me correctly, the Lib Dems have been against this Bill all along.

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. We are wandering a little far from the amendment under discussion.

Alistair Carmichael: I think that we have wandered much further than this in the debate, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I take your stricture to heart.
	Lords amendment No. 70 brings with it the ultimate sanction that the Bill could be implemented only after all those matters had been established to the satisfaction of this House. We should not cast that off lightly. I like the idea put forward by the right hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras that there should be an ongoing review of costs, but my difficulty with his amendment is that I am afraid that paragraph (4) would act as a get-out-of-jail free card for the Government.

David Drew: The hon. Gentleman makes just the point that I wanted to make. I am greatly attracted by what my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Frank Dobson) says because the problem with Government IT contracts is the ongoing costs, which, admittedly, usually come on the back of an overrun on the initial set-up costs. Such costs could be trapped by   amendment (a), whereas Lords amendment 70 apparently would not do that. Does the hon. Gentleman agree?

Alistair Carmichael: I accept that; indeed, I have just made that point, more or less. However, if the Government are minded to proceed along the lines outlined in amendment (a), there is absolutely no barrier to them doing so without putting it in the Bill. It is always open to the Government to review such matters and to make reports in the way suggested. Neither amendment should necessarily be seen as being exclusive of the other.

Frank Dobson: The hon. Gentleman says that there would be no comeback for the Secretary of State if he held back information from his six-monthly report. However, I suggest that if he admits to holding back a piece of information in one six-monthly report and still wants to hold it back in the next such report, there would be a considerable political pain for him, providing at least that the Opposition parties were doing their job properly.

Alistair Carmichael: That would require us to know that the information is there and is being withheld, which is not always the case, as the right hon. Gentleman must be aware. In any event, if something is the subject of commercial confidentiality today, it will probably still be so in six months. It is difficult to see how that situation would change.

Frank Dobson: I know that the hon. Gentleman was a lawyer, but we are not talking about commercial confidentiality. The Secretary of State would have to say that
	it would be prejudicial to securing the best value from the use of public money,
	which is a harsher test than the generalised claptrap that all Governments have used about commercial confidentiality.

Alistair Carmichael: I fear that the right hon. Gentleman's expression,
	securing the best value from the use of public money
	would include commercial confidentiality and much else besides. He has drawn the new clause even wider.

Edward Garnier: The problem is that we could not test the truth of the Secretary of State's decision and whether it was soundly based. That is simply indefinable.

Alistair Carmichael: The hon. and learned Gentleman is absolutely right.
	I am trying desperately to conclude my remarks. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Lynne Jones) skewered the Under-Secretary with her interventions about the KPMG report. She has struck at the heart of the problem with the Government's approach. They constantly overstate and oversell the benefits and underestimate the disadvantages. There is little in the Government's history on the matter that makes me believe that I or my constituents should be prepared to trust them. I therefore hope that we shall not disagree with Lords amendment No. 70.

Lynne Jones: I welcome the Government's agreement with amendment (a). However, my problem is that large amounts of public money will be spent before we reach the inevitable point at which we have to call a halt to the terrible monster. I am more sceptical than my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Frank Dobson) about the Government's figures. Their precision is incredible584 million, not 583 million or 585 million. At least the London School of Economics gave a range of estimates. The Under-Secretary did not make it clear in reply to my interventions whether the figure included set-up costs.
	However, we have information about current expenditure from the United Kingdom Passport Service website. I also obtained information through parliamentary questions and from letters from the Under-Secretary. We therefore know that the cost of running the old-style passports was 219 million in 200405 and that the charge to people who wanted a passport was 35.60. This year, we commence the introduction of biometric passports, which will include only the facial biometrica digital image. Yet it will cost the Government 397 million a year and people who purchase the passports will have to pay at least 57.93, which, according to the Government, is the cost of producing the passports.
	In getting from old-style passports to the first phase of the biometric passport, which includes only one image, the running costs will increase by 178 million a year. Those figures are probably reliable. However, the jump from the new passport with one digital biometric to the all-singing, all-dancing biometric passport/ID card system database is supposed to entail an increase of a mere 187 million. I cannot believe those figures. I cannot believe that it costs 178 million a year to get from A to B yet it will cost only 187 million a year to get from B to C. That does not include the 93 that will have to be paid. Apparently, 70 per cent. of it is attributable to the passport, working out at approximately 65 for the passport element. I cannot believe that a passport that contains two fingerprint biometrics as well as the facial biometric will be so cheap, given that the Government have already said that the cost will exceed 57.93. Furthermore, the 93 that people will pay for the privilege or otherwise of having their details on the national identity register and being forced to have an identity card will not cover the cost of operating and maintaining the verification services. We have had no breakdown of how much of the 584 million that would account for; it is an additional cost.
	I am cynical about Government computer systems. I recently served on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, which conducted a brief inquiry into the Rural Payments Agency's computer records system. The initial cost of that system was going to be 37.4 million a year, to cover capital and revenue costs. That figure has now risen to 54.3 millionan increase of 50 per cent. If a database of only 100,000 records is costing 50-odd million a year to run, it does not seem sensible that we are going to have to pay only an extra 187 million a year to run a massive database of 100 million records, which will be interrogated and will have an audit trailnever mind the cost of the security.
	What really frightens me about this scheme is that it will make me feel less secure, rather than more secure. The biometrics will have radio frequency identity chips on them, and people will have a field day intercepting them. So what security are we going to put on to the cards? In America, the biometric passportswhich also have just the facial biometrichave radio frequency identity chips so that they can be read without contact. There was a furore there when people realised that anyone could intercept that identity information, and an agreement to allow the scheme to go ahead was reached only because a shield was provided in the cover of each passport to stop the signals being intercepted other than when the cover was opened for the passport to be verified at border controls or for Government purposes.
	The figures simply do not stack up. They do not compare in any way with the costs of other computer systems, and the proposed system is far more complex than any other that we have seen anywhere in the world. Earlier, the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee quoted from his Committee's report. I should also like to do so. Paragraph 64 on page 23 states:
	The proposed system is unprecedentedly large and complex. It will contain sensitive personal information on tens of millions of individuals. Any failure will significantly affect the functioning of public and private services and personal and national security. Measures to ensure the integrity of the design, implementation and operation of the system must be built in to every aspect of its development . . . We will make recommendations for addressing this serious weakness later in the report.
	The Committee went on to do so. It had been
	concerned about the closed nature of the procurement process,
	and stated that it was essential the process be open. It went on:
	Any potential gains from competing providers providing innovative design solutions are likely to be more than offset by the unanticipated problems that will arise from designs that have not been subject to technical and peer scrutiny.

John Bercow: To what extent, if at all, does the hon. Lady think that the Government have factored into their calculations the capital and running costs of the extra 70 high street offices that the UK Passport Service proposes to establish for the purpose of conducting interviews with first-time passport applicants? It has never been clear to me why such a provision is necessary, although Mr. Bernard Herdan is clearly keen to drive the agenda. Clearly there will be a bill to pay, will there not?

Lynne Jones: It is probably easier for the Government to estimate the cost of providing buildings than it is for them to estimate the cost of providing complex computer systems. I have to accept their assurances that that is included, although I note that there will also have to be two secure facilities for the storing of the computer systems. I am not sure that the time scale that the Government say they have in mind will allow them to procure those facilities. I envisage many problems. It is clear that the Government have not recognised the need for an open procurement policy, as advocated by the Select Committee. The Committee said that the Government must
	develop an open procurement policy, on the basis of system and card specifications that are publicly assessed and agreed.

William Cash: Has the hon. Lady, in the course of her diligent analysis, considered the extremely difficult problem of assessing the extent to which the wide-ranging powers in the Bill will be used or not used? There is a great deal of uncertainty about the extent to which certain powers will be used, and indeed about whether the whole process will be extended to involve designated documents. As I said in an earlier intervention, the process seems to be endless. Has the hon. Lady seen any calculation that reveals the impact of the powers if they are used? When an aircraft or a ship is being built, it is possible to see that it will end up as a product. Here, we are talking merely about a vague use of powers.

Lynne Jones: I am prepared to accept the Government's assurances that the driving licence will not be a designated document, but it is clear that the identity card and the operation of the database will go ahead. The Government are determined to use those powers, at least for the time being, until the costs emerge. They might think twice about it after that. We do not know the extent to which other Departments, or even devolved Assemblies and Parliaments, will use the database to deliver services. The costs are not included in the Government's 584 million assessment.
	The UK Computing Research Committee has commented on the document on the assessment of technologies needed for a national ID card scheme. It says that the assessment is not objective, because the authors have an interest in supplying the ID technologies. Most independent experts are dubious about the Government's scope and ability to deliver. They include the London School of Economicswhose work the Government have rubbished without justification, as we learned from the letter from Brian Gladwyn to the Prime Ministerand the UK Computing Research Committee, as well as other organisations dealing with computing.
	I do not think we should spend vast amounts of public money on a scheme that is highly dubious, and whose benefits, let alone costs, have not been assessed. I tabled a parliamentary question to the Department of Health on the cost of people gaining access to health services when they were not entitled to do so. The Department had no idea of the cost. We do not yet know whether it will go along with the scheme, but the Minister has said that it would benefit the NHS.
	I am prepared to bet that the 584 million will prove to be only a fraction of the eventual cost if the Government insist on the scheme. The proposed six-monthly estimates are welcome. However, the Government will perhaps end up spending billions of pounds before realising the error of this approach. Instead, they should opt for the solution that all other European countries are opting for: documents that have biometrics on the card, and appropriate security precautions that are an improvementas they will have to beon those currently available. The Government should drop their obsession with this ridiculous national identity register, which will be costly, has severe implications for civil liberties and will prove a honey pot for international criminals and terrorists. Rather than protecting our identities, such a register will lead to everybody facing the threat of identity theft.
	When I spoke on Second Reading, I expressed concern about the security of biometrics and the ability of individuals to apply for more than one document. That fear remains and the Government have had to react to such criticisms by greatly increasing the number of biometrics to be stored. Originally, they planned to have only iris recognition and facial recognition; now, they have been forced down the route of including 10 fingerprints. Even if the system proves 99 per cent. accurate, there will still be 48,000 false matches in a database of 48 million people. It will not be the ordinary citizen who will apply for multiple ID cards using the same biometrics. However, the system will not be able to know that the same biometrics have been duplicated, but with different identities. Terrorists, money launderers and international criminals will be willing to hack into the system, and they will be patient.
	The police computer system is regularly abused from the inside by police officers giving information to journalists; other systems have been hacked into. Staff working in computer centres could be bribed or blackmailed into handing over sensitive data. What will happen, for example, if somebody changes the address on my database record and puts in a request for an audit trail? Such information will then be delivered securely to the alternative address. The implications are horrendous. Chips on the card will allow people to be followed wherever they go, unless the security that nations such as America are building into

Andy Burnham: It is not right to say that chips on the cards will enable people to be followed wherever they go; that simply is not true.

Lynne Jones: As I understand it from answers given to me previously by the Minister, the cards will contain radio frequency identity chips that will send out a signal, which will be picked up by antennae. If they are to be stand-alone cards, the chips will need to be read by a reader at close proximity. However, many experts have expressed doubts about this scheme, in that, if the chips are to be read remotely, the signals could be picked up as people travel from one antenna to another. Obviously, the power of such antennae will be a factor in that regard.
	The private sector will have readers and access to the verification service, so there will have to be some form of encryption. However, the fact remains that those in the private sector will have access to my identity and will be able to steal it. If the readers are stolen, other peopledepending on the accuracy of those readerswill be able to steal my identity.
	If the Government are concerned about identity fraud, they should not go down this route. There are much simpler and less costly ways to address identity fraud. In the US, for example, when somebody wishes to access consumer reference information, they have to obtain the permission of the individual. In that way, the individual will know if someone is applying for credit or carrying out financial transactions in their name. The Government could introduce such measures and ensure better security than will be achieved by this expensive scheme. The Government claim that it will make us more secure and deal with terrorism and immigration, but immigrants will not have to have identity cards. The Government should reconsider and move towards having biometrics on passports, as other countries are doing. They should abandon the database and the costs that will be associated with it.

Sammy Wilson: It is important that we get this right for two reasons that the Minister gave earlierfirst, because we now have a scheme that will be compulsory and, secondly, because, as the Minister has said, the bulk of the costs will be covered by fees. If costs go up, fees will go up. The cost of the scheme will be borne by our constituents. It is therefore important that we have as much information as possible about what the scheme will mean to the people whom we represent.
	I do not believe that amendment (a), tabled by the right hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Frank Dobson), would do what it is claimed it would do. I suspect that the very reason that the Minister is prepared to accept it is because he knows that it is the dog that will not bark. It will not even growl or whimper. The Minister is bound to like the amendment because it will not provide any ability to stop the scheme in its tracks. We will not have the information that would allow us to make a considered decision until it is too late. The right hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras said that it was better than the Lords amendment because it allowed us to look at the ongoing costs, but we know that the Minister will be able to hold back information on that under subsection (4). It states that information may be held back if it is
	prejudicial to securing the best value from the use of public money.
	That is the very basis on which the Minister has held back the full capital cost of the scheme. We are told that it would breach commercial confidentiality and stop us getting the best value. So in his six-monthly reports, the Home Secretary will be able to hold back the very information that would enable us to make an assessment of the costs. Amendment (a) would not do what is necessary.
	We have heard a lot of hocus-pocus economics this evening. It must be down to my experience in local government, but I always get worried when a report goes into minute detail. As the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Lynne Jones) said, the Minister can pinpoint the cost as 584 million a year. But when we start asking the big questions, everything becomes vague and we are told that for reasons of commercial confidentiality the capital costs cannot be revealed. In my experience of local government, that usually means that no one is quite sure how much the scheme will cost at the end of the day. When I encounter that approach, I begin to be wary.
	The Minister, again in answer to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak, said that the capital could either be paid in a lump sum or annualised and added on as running costs. He gave an assurance that it would not be more than the annual running costs according to the present estimate, but if the amount was equal to the running costs the annual cost would double. Will that be added to the fees that the public pay for the card? The Minister gave no indication.

Andy Burnham: I did not say that the set-up costs would be absorbed in the 584 million; they are additional. The baseline for the UK Passport Service is included in the 584 million. I said that the incrementthe additional amount in respect of ID cardswas in the region of 200 million a year. That is the increment for the annual running costs; the set-up costs will be much less than 584 million a year.

Sammy Wilson: The hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak asked how the costs of the scheme would be paid. One of the options was that it would be on an annual leasing basis, but would that be included as part of the cost of the card? If so, the cost of the card would increase.
	The right hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras said that, due to the six-monthly reports, the amendment would put chocks under the wheelsthe scheme could be stoppedbut there are no sanctions in the amendment, so I do not know how that would happen. Reference has been made to many public sector schemes this evening, and we are all familiar with the Child Support Agency on which 400 million was spent, yet three years on, we are still considering what to do about it. Once the capital investment in the technology was made, it was felt that we had to try to make it work. I suspect that will be the case with the ID card scheme. Once the capital investment has been made, and the scheme is up and running and a large number of people have bought the cards, the argument, regardless of the costs, will be, Well, we can't drop it now. People have paid for the cards and we've bought the technology, so we've got to make it work. If that means extra costs, that is what will happen.
	The amendment will not put the chocks under the wheels. All it will do is enable us to observe, on a six-monthly basis, the increase in the costs of the scheme. I do not know whether it will cost 24 billion or 5.8 billion, but from my experience of local government, the Policing Board or central Government, the one thing I know is that IT schemes of that nature never run out at the original cost. The amendment will enable us to watch the costs increasing, but we shall be unable to stop the bandwagon rolling. For that reason, I shall not support it.

Mark Todd: I shall try to focus on the amendments. I have quite a lot of sympathy for the Lords amendment, although in many respects it is not perfect, so I shall not endorse it. Nor shall I endorse the amendment tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Frank Dobson), for reasons that I shall give in a moment.
	The Lords amendment is rather too narrowly written. I tabled a new clause on Report that attempted to set out the kind of things that I would expect the Government to produce before they authorised substantial expenditure on such a project. Unfortunately, that new clause was not selected, but it focused first on the fact that the Secretary of State ought to set out properly the reasons for such a proposal. We have seen a number of documents so far that, frankly, make limited reading indeed in explaining why the proposal is a good idea, why it will produce the sort of benefits that have been vaguely referred to and why we should endorse it. I do not share some colleagues' views that the Bill is a terrible threat to civil liberties. I have never thought that. My instinct is that it might be a terrible threat to our public purse. That has been the focus of my concern throughout.
	Secondly, I would expect the costs and benefits to be set out in reasonable terms. This is not the time at which one could certainly demonstrate the cost with any authority. As I have remarked in my interventions, frankly, the LSE proposals are based on its own concept of how an ID card system might work. They may be valuable in those terms, but they have no authority since they bear no relationship to what the Government may be attempting to do.
	The Government have set out their ideas in such vague terms that, frankly, it would be impossible for a professional contractor to produce anything other than fairly speculative estimates of how much those ideas might cost. That is why I have remarked on the KPMG report. I do not know how much was spent on it, but to be honest, it will do what most consultants will wisely do: it will cover their bases very carefully and certainly not end up by giving a great deal of authority to a figure that most professionals would say could only be speculative at this time. I suspect that, if the full report were made available, one would probably see those caveats written in rather larger type than in the summary. I would expect the costs and benefits to be produced, but when procurement was about to proceed. That was the point of the new clause that I tabled on Report.
	Thirdly, I would want the assumptions behind any savings to be properly set out. I intervened on my hon. Friend the Minister about the buy-in of other stakeholders in the project. I referred particularly to the private sector, but I could equally have touched on the role of other Departments. Even given the rather vague business case that has been produced to date, the private sector obviously has an important role to play. It is understood that the project may be crucial in reducing fraud in our financial system. If so, one might expect that many of our financial institutions would be putting up their hands now, saying We wholeheartedly endorse this project, and we wish to see it proceed as fast as possible.
	I drew my hon. Friend the Minister's attention to the fact that those statements of faith have, as yet, not been made. When I questioned officials and IT professionals, they gave a rather sunny and optimistic reason for that and suggested that people were waiting for the Bill to be passed and would then dive in very quickly. They genuinely do not know whether they are buying a pig in a poke, exactly what the project involves and what meaning it may have for their businesses. For that reason, they are most unlikely to put a buy-in together. I would expect the stakeholderswhether private sector partners or those in other aspects of government, such as the agencies and Departments, which must clearly play a partto make a much more coherent statement of the benefits when procurement is about to proceed.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Lynne Jones) referred to the Department of Health, and that is a very good example. We would expect it to participate in the scheme, but I doubt whether it has even the vaguest idea of how the scheme might apply to what it does.Much of the information will be required at some stage in the future. I do not expect the documents that the Government have produced so far to refer to it in detail, but I would expect there to be a point at which we have an opportunity to review the details before further substantial sums of public money are committed.
	I also want a much more rigorous examination of the risks in the projectone or two of them have been touched on in the debateand how they are likely to be mitigated. Risk mitigation means cost. Dealing with perceived events and working out their likelihood of threatening a project of this kind require steps to improve its security. Such steps may deal only with a one-in-a-million circumstance but, in a project as central as this, a one-in-a-million circumstance may well be what we have to deal with.
	I often remark that our tolerance of error rates for people flying airlines or performing complex surgery is much lower than it would be for someone performing a less critical function. We expect people carrying out high-risk functions to take steps to reduce the risks either through the intervention of technology or additional human support. Those certainly cost money. I am not clear how the risks have been analysed and how costs have been applied to reducing those risks.
	I have described the points that I would like to have seen covered but, unfortunately, the Lords amendment is rather more narrowly drawn. If they choose to consider what happens tonight, they may want to reflect on that should they return the issue to us.
	I have already referred to the importance of transparency for all our benefit in the project. A number of reports have been pulled together by agencies outside and inside government to assist us in judging whether it is the right thing to do. We have had the KPMG report. Although I would not want to read it in considerable detail, its full publication would have been helpful to us at this time. The Office of Government Commerce gateway process that the project will go through on a number of occasions at various points in its life also provides a useful indication of risk. One of its major focuses is to say what risks have been anticipated in the running of the project and how we might deal with them. From the little glimpse that some civil servants kindly gave me the last time the process was carried out, it is not surprising that it is regarded as extremely high risk with a number of flashing amber lights indicating that steps need to be taken to deal with possible failure in the future. That would not surprise anyone, but it would be useful to have the risks more clearly defined so that we can understand them and can start to put money towards dealing with them.
	I also wish to refer to the concept viability report that the industry has been asked to produce. I believe that it has actually been produced and the Minister told me earlier that it would be published at the procurement point. I would rather see it now, so that I can understand the industry's reaction. Those in the industry that I have spoken to have broadly said that most of them would love to take part in such a project because it looks like serious stacks of money are involved.

David Davis: About 20 billion.

Mark Todd: Whatever the figure is. The right hon. Gentleman has not been present for this debate, but he will know that I have cast doubt on all the estimates that have been made. That is one of them.
	People in the industry are keen, but I think that they share my concern at the rather muddled presentation and the possibility that it will lead to a complex and poor quality specification that will not necessarily get the buy-in of all the critical players. That is at the root of failed IT projects. I shall not go down the route taken by my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, who chose to cast a great deal of blame on IT companies. Of course, they fail and do things wrong. However, the critical thing that normally goes wrong in such projects happens right at the start. It is necessary to get the specification of what is being done absolutely straight before driving the project through with narrow-minded rigour. A critical test is thus the quality of project management, which would indicate whether costs could be managed effectively. However, although I have met one or two of the people involved in the project, I have seen no evidence to date of the rigorous project management disciplines that would be required to deliver a project that was a tenth as difficult as the identity card scheme will be.
	For the reasons that I have outlined, I take no great comfort from the debate. I have given all these pieces of advice in private, so it is a little sad to find that little progress appears to have been made. I am surprised that the Government have chosen to support the amendment tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras because while I accept the caveats that have been cited about the possibility of evading various responsibilities due to the amendment, the provision will give rise to a process of terrible Chinese water torture because some poor Minister will have to produce a report every six months. The Minister might well say, I can't reveal them this and can't tell them that, but the reports will prompt ongoing repetitive debate on the merits and purpose of the scheme. I am not worried about that, but I am puzzled by the Government's insistence on taking that route to reassure people about the project, rather than the route that I would have commended, which would be a more rigorous attempt to nail things down right at the start. That remains my preferred strategy, so I still hope that the Government will adopt it. I am sad that I will not be able to give the Government my support on these matters tonight.

Stewart Hosie: I want to take the Minister back to his opening remarks when he mentioned fraud worth 1.7 billion. Such fraud is central to the debate because it determines whether the Bill is a proportionate response to the problem. I have no doubt that the figure of 1.7 billion was put in the public domain to give the impression that when the ID card system was fully deployed in the public and private sectors, a problem of such magnitude could be resolved, but I question that assertion. I also wish to focus on the fraud because it is the only argument in favour of the identity card scheme that the Government have consistently used from the outsetthey abandoned all their other justifications at various points along the way.
	There are many components to the 1.7 billion figure. Although I will not bore the House by going through them all, I shall outline several because it is genuinely important that I make this case. The Association of British Insurers says that the estimate of financial loss due to identity fraud is 22 million. If the biometric system and ID cards are to tackle such fraud in the insurance system, every insurance policy will have to be linked to a biometric card and its holder. Every time an assessor checks water or fire damage against a policy, the holder's biometric card will have to be verified so that there is a link between the person, the card and the policy. That is the only way in which the scheme could help to tackle fraud in the insurance system, but the process would be expensive, and no doubt the full cost of it would be passed on from the insurers to the citizen.
	The Association for Payment Clearing Services says that 504.8 million is lost due to plastic cards being used by criminals who are not their rightful owners. It has been said several times that the cost of fraud due to payments made when a card is not present is 150 million. If a person buys a plane or cinema ticket with a plastic card, both that card and the ID card could be presented at the aircraft or cinema for checking to prove that the person had made the purchase. However, if people buy goods by mail order that are simply delivered by a man with a white van, the scheme will provide no assistance whatsoever because goods can be delivered when people are not at home and the man is not going to have a biometric scanner in the cab of his van. That part of the 1.7 billion figure cannot be dealt with by the biometric register or the identity card.
	According to the Building Societies Association, 3.1 million is lost to identity fraud, but the same applies to building societies as it does to insurers. Every building society account would have to be linked to a person with a biometric profile and every time a transaction on that account took place, fraudulent or otherwise, the person involved would have to verify their card against the central database and the central database against their account. That is the only way in which the proposed system could prevent fraud in the building societies sector, but it would be disproportionate and highly expensive, and the full costs would be passed on to the citizen and the customer.
	CIFAS, the UK's fraud prevention service, says that the cost of identity fraud to the retail sector is 2.3 million. Much of that involves stolen cards being used in corner shops or supermarkets. It is inconceivable that there would be a biometric scanner at every till in Sainsbury's or Tesco's oreven worseat the till in every corner shop. It is unlikely that the biometric register and the ID card could tackle that type of retail without placing a massive cost burden on the consumer and the citizen.
	The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency and the Driving Standards Agency say that the cost of preventing identity fraudnot of fraud itselfin their sectors would 2.5 million and 1.2 million.

Tony McNulty: indicated dissent.

Stewart Hosie: Well, perhaps the Minister can intervene and tell me by how much that cost of prevention will be reduced and what savings the consumer and the citizen will gain if the new system is introduced. I have paused, but the Minister is staying shtumthat is okay.
	The list goes on. The Finance and Leasing Association estimates that
	identity fraud arising from the provision of motor finance
	costs 14 million. Does the Minister seriously expect an identity card system to stop that sort of fraud? Does he expect every second-hand car dealer that pulls out a set of financial agreements to be signed in a portakabin somewhere to use a biometric scanner before allocating them to the person who has come in to purchase a car? That would be the only way in which the ID system and the biometric register could solve that problem.
	It is highly unlikely that anything approaching 1.7 billion will be saved. Earlier, the Minister suggested a lower annual saving. He suggested a range, but even the low end of his forecast would be achieved only if all the measures that I have described were implemented. Such savings could not be achieved within the set-up costs and the ongoing running costs of the system covering passports and ID cards alone that the Secretary of State spoke about earlier.
	It is certain that the real cost to the citizen will be far higher than the costs that the Government have already specifiedthe running costs and the set-up costs, which are still unclear. Those costs will be higher than has been suggested, because if identity cards and the central biometric database are to solve problems of fraud, scanners linked to the database will be required in every shop, supermarket and filling station, and in every bank, building society and insurance broker. The police will need portable scanners in their police cars, and insurance assessors likewise. The costs of all that would be fully passed on to the consumer.
	It is incumbent on the Government to tell us not their set-up costs and the Home Office running costs, but the real and full costs of the measure, including a best-guess estimate of the costs to the private sector. It is incumbent on Ministers to tell us whether businesses will be expected to bear the costs or whether they can pass them on wholly to the citizen, or by how much the Government will have to increase taxes to pay for the scheme if they believe that ending some of these fraudulent measures would be worth while and cost effective. Either way, with a project of such a scale and complexity, we cannot be expected to buy a pig in a poke.
	I want to support a robust announcement of the coststhe detailed development and running costs, including those in the private sectorbut that is not an option in either amendment. However, Lords amendment No. 70 is more robust, not least because amendment (a) in lieu has the 10-year rule, which would allow large hikes in capital expenditure or early revenue to be averaged out and hidden over the 10 years for which the figures are reported. If we vote on thatit is not yet clear that we willthe Scottish National party will back the Lords amendment.
	I hope that the Minister and others on the Labour Benches will take cognisance of the feeling on the subject. We need genuine detailed information up front. We need no obfuscation. We need to be clear of the set-up costs, not just for the Home Office, but for the whole scheme, and of the running costs not just for the Home Office, but for every Department. In the private sector, we need best guesstimates so that we understand exactly what the cost to the citizen and consumer will be if the identity fraud played up by the Government is genuinely to be tackled.

Martin Linton: It is nice to be able to return to the subject of the cost and benefit of ID cards. I was fortunate enough to have question 1 this afternoon, as you might remember, Mr. Speaker. It was on the cost of ID cards per person. The answer from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State was that the cost of a stand-alone ID card would be 30 for 10 years3 per person per year. It is important that we subject the issue to a simple analysis of cost and benefit. We know that the cost is 3 per person per year

Alistair Carmichael: The hon. Gentleman knows that, does he?

Martin Linton: I do. The 30 has been announced. It is to be over 10 years. Even my arithmetical capability is up to doing that division sum: it is 3 per person per year. The Home Office has estimated the benefits. Estimates are bound to be rough, but no one has seriously challenged its figures. In fact, they have hardly been mentioned. I get the impression that no one has read the document put out at least a year ago on the Home Office benefits overview.

Mark Todd: As someone who certainly read the setting out of the Government's positionsuch as it wasthere is no evidence from any private sector source on the supposed savings and benefits that may be achieved. A figure is named, but no one sets out any evidence on how it was calculated, based on real experience.

Martin Linton: I am happy to provide my hon. Friend with the answer. Although the figures are published by the Home Office, they are taken from APACS, CIFAS, banks and all the financial institutions that have provided estimates to the Home Office, and it has reprinted them. Hon. Members may cast doubt on those, but the figures have been arrived at by the people who will make use of the ID system.
	The combined effect of all the estimates, including those from Departments, is a benefit of up to 1.1 billion. I am sure that hon. Members can work out that the figure of 1.1 billion divided among about 38 million ID card holders is a benefit of 29 a person. So there is a cost of 3 and a benefit of 29. [Laughter.] Hon. Members may laugh because so many figures of billions of pounds have been poured over the House. The simple truth is, however, that the best estimates show that that is the value of the ID card.
	There are those whose main concern is civil liberties and the police, although they will have no additional powers.

Dawn Butler: The Bill does not give the police any extra powers. However, does my hon. Friend agree that although the police will not be allowed to stop someone and request an ID card on spec, the Bill does not stipulate that they cannot stop someone and ask for biometrics on spec? I hope that he can he confirm that they cannot do so under the Bill, as it would result in an electronic form of the sus laws which, we all know, disproportionately affect black and minority ethnic people?

Martin Linton: That is my understanding of the Bill, and I would not support it if I thought that it was a device to give the police powers to stop people in the street and ask them for their ID cards. From the very beginning of this debate four or five years ago, it was made clear in the Government White Paper and the consultation document that the Government did not want to consult onindeed, they did not even countenancethe introduction of an ID card that people must carry at all times. Some European countries require the carrying of ID cards, but that option was excluded from the start. I do not believe that the police should be able to stop people and ask them for details of biometrics or anything else for which they cannot already ask.

Sadiq Khan: My hon. Friend said that some people were concerned about civil liberties. There are anxieties that the amount of information on the register that is limited under schedule 1 to name, date of birth, place of birth, gender and address will creep up and increase. Can he confirm that before additional information is included in the register primary legislation must be introduced?

Martin Linton: That is my understanding. Only six items of personal information will be included on the registername, address, date of birth, place of birth, sex, nationality and, for people from overseas, information about their work permit. The legislation does not allow any further information to be added to the register. I believe one or two items should be added to ID cards, including organ donor information and medical information which, in an emergency, could make the difference between life and death. However, even that information, which could save someone's life in hospital, cannot legally be added to the register.

Andy Burnham: May I clarify something in response to the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Brent, South (Ms Butler)? I can confirm that the Bill does not extend police powers, as my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Martin Linton) rightly said. It would only provide power of identification in the case of arrest, but obviously the police already have such a power. The Bill does not create the situation feared by my hon. Friend the Member for Brent, South, but it would ease police bureaucracy in the case of ascertaining identity.

Martin Linton: I thank my hon. Friend for that reassurance.
	The total quantified financial benefits are estimated by the Home Officeanyone is welcome to challenge the figures, but it is significant that in six hours of debate few Members have chosen to do soto be 1.1 billion. That figure, as I said, was agreed with the banks and the organisations that will use the scheme. More than half the expected savings are expected to come from savings on ID fraud alone, and they will amount to 570 million. The more efficient running of public services will account for 385 million85 million from the reduction in crime and only 39 million from the reduction in immigration offences.

Lynne Jones: The database will be an active database containing the audit trail and a record of every time the verification service is used. Does that not cause my hon. Friend concern? With reference to the question from our hon. Friend the Member for Brent, South (Ms Butler), the police will not need to access the card if they have readers, because the person will be present and they will be able to check the biometrics against the register.

Martin Linton: As I understand it, the organisations that seek verification from the register will be able to do so only with the consent of the individual, and they will get verification only of the details that they give. Only the police and the security services, when investigating a crime, will be able to get the audit trail. I am happy to be corrected by my hon. Friend the Minister if that is wrong. The audit trail is available for the investigation of crime.
	We should concentrate on the massive cost of identity fraud, which has increased, as we know from last week

Alistair Carmichael: The hon. Gentleman was asked by the hon. Member for Tooting (Mr. Khan) whether he could confirm that schedule 1 could be altered only by way of primary legislation. He confirmed that that was the case. Has he considered the effect of clause 3(5), which states:
	The Secretary of State may by order modify the information for the time being set out in Schedule 1?
	Does he wish to reconsider the answer that he gave to his hon. Friend?

Martin Linton: I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister will intervene if I am wrong. At the very least, the subsection that the hon. Gentleman quotes is an indication that the schedule could not be changed without the approval of the House.
	All hon. Members must know someone who has had their card stolen and their identity stolen, perhaps by someone going through rubbish and picking out their credit card numbers. That is one of the fastest growing crimes. Quite apart from the effect on the individual whose identity is stolen, the average time taken to sort out the financial problems caused by identity theft is 60 hours, and in some cases goes up to 240 hours. Individuals who are victims of identity crime may be compensated by the banks, which are held responsible, but the banks must recover their costs from us in bank charges. The average person in the UK pays at least 25 or 30 a year through bank charges to cover the cost of ID fraud.
	Wednesday sees the introduction of chip and pin to make savings on fraud, but the savings to be made from reducing ID fraud through the ID card are far greater. If those who make the cost argument were to succeed, they would have to argue that the cost of the card is nearly 10 times higher than the Home Office says. All the indications are that the costs of ID fraud are rising. The benefits of curbing it are likely to be higher. The Minister announced from the Home Office this week that the cost to the country of ID fraud has increased from 1.3 billion to 1.7 billion.

David Drew: In the time assigned to me, I shall make two points. I am delighted to say that having been a critic on the basis of the costs of the exercise, I find myself in agreement with my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary. We will look carefully at the figures.
	My second point is about a matter on which I feel strongly. I am sure that my hon. Friends the Ministers will listen, as I have lobbied them in the past. It is a great shame that we have not reached the Liberal Democrat amendment on accessibility. There is an issue that is not financial in terms of costs and benefits, but concerns how individuals can be persuaded to take up biometric passports, and ID cards in due course, and that relates to the need for people to be able to get easily to places where they can give their biometric details. I would argue strongly that only one body meets that requirement, and that is the Post Office. I have lobbied Ministers on this and I make no apology for finishing this particular set of debates on that

It being Ten o'clock, Mr. Speaker put forthwith the Question already proposed from the Chair, pursuant to Order [this day].
	The House divided: Ayes 314, Noes 261.

Question accordingly agreed to.
	Lords amendment disagreed to.
	Lords amendments Nos. 68 to 70 disagreed to.
	Amendment (a) in lieu of Lords amendments Nos. 1, 68, 69 and 70 agreed to.
	Lords amendment No. 4 disagreed to.

Clause 24
	  
	Appointment of National Identity Scheme Commissioner

Lords amendment: No. 47.
	Motion made, and Question put, That this House disagrees with the Lords in the said amendment.[Joan Ryan.]
	The House divided: Ayes 318, Noes 257.

Question accordingly agreed to.
	Lords amendment disagreed to.
	Lords amendments Nos. 48, 50 and 51 disagreed to.
	Lords amendment: No. 3.
	Motion made, and Question put, That this House disagrees with the Lords in the said amendment.[Joan Ryan.]
	The House divided: Ayes 316, Noes 257.

Question accordingly agreed to.
	Lords amendment No. 3 disagreed to.
	Government amendment (a) in lieu of Lords amendment No. 3 agreed to.
	Remaining Lords amendments agreed to.
	Committee appointed to draw up Reasons to be assigned to the Lords for disagreeing with their amendments Nos. 4, 16, 22, 47, 48, 50 and 51: Vera Baird, Mr. Alistair Carmichael, Mr. Edward Garnier, Mr. Tony McNulty and Joan Ryan; Mr. Tony McNulty to be the Chairman of the Committee; Three to be the quorum of the Committee.[Joan Ryan.]
	To withdraw immediately.
	Reasons for disagreeing to certain Lords amendments reported, and agreed to; to be communicated to the Lords.

DELEGATED LEGISLATION

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 118(6)(Standing Committees on Delegated Legislation),

Terms and Conditions of Employment

That the draft Information and Consultation of Employees (Amendment) Regulations 2006, which were laid before this House on 12th January, be approved.[Mr. Cawsey.]
	Question agreed to.
	Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 118(6)(Standing Committees on Delegated Legislation),

Pensions

That the draft Occupational and Personal Pension Schemes (Consultation by Employers and Miscellaneous Amendment) Regulations 2006, which were laid before this House on 12th January, be approved.[Mr. Cawsey.]
	Question agreed to.

TREASURY

Ordered,
	That Mr David Ruffley be discharged from the Treasury Committee and Mr David Gauke be added.[Rosemary McKenna, on behalf of the Committee of Selection.]

LOCAL GOVERNMENT FUNDING (POOLE)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.[Mr. Cawsey.]

Robert Syms: This is not the first time that I have debated local government finance in Poole; it probably will not be the last, since we have a perennial problem with the shortage of funding from central Government. It does not seem to matter what system is invented by the people in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, we always seem to come out very much at the bottom end of the table. So whether it is the standard spending assessment, the formula spending share or the new system, Poole does not seem to be doing very well out of the system.
	This year, the total Government grant increase is the minimum, which is 2 per cent. The unitary authority average, against which I shall compare during this short debate, is 2.8 per cent. Our total formula grant will be 22.8 million, which provides funding of a little under 167 per head. The unitary average is 330. That difference is worth nearly 22.3 milliona substantial sum that could make a significant difference to the quality of services delivered to my constituents in Poole.
	I will not go into too much technical detailnot least because the new funding system, with its four blocks, is a little more difficult break into and break down when trying to find out the reasons why the grant is at a certain levelbut the finance officers in Poole certainly feel very disappointed with the new system, which they think is complex and rather less transparent than the older system. The Minister might acknowledge the fact that the Local Government Association and others have criticised the new system.
	None of the 150 education or social services authorities is receiving what the formula grant needs and resources calculation determines: 70 of them are at the floor and gaining moreincluding Poole, which is getting an extra 323 per headand 80 are having their grant reduced or dampened to ensure that they all receive a minimum grant increase. That fact indicates that the formula system does not work, and there are real concerns about that.
	What special issues do we have in Poole? Wages are certainly low. The average weekly wage for full-time workers resident in Poole was 448.5086.4 per cent. of the average for Englandbut that contrasts with house prices, which are particularly high. The average selling price of all houses sold in Poole in 2004 was just over 10 times the average annual full-time income. That big gap has a great impact on the local authority's finances and recruitment. The population is ageing. Compared with the rest of the country, a smaller proportion of Poole's population is found in all five age bands under 50 and a greater proportion in all age bands over 50, across both sexes. Currently, about 54,500 people in Poole are aged 50-plus, which represents 40 per cent. of the population. Although, when one looks at the Sunday papers, one occasionally sees fabulous houses for sale at extortionate prices, that is not typical of Poole. It might be typical of one or two areas but, along with the areas of wealth, there are areas of great deprivation, including some wards that show up as being very deprived.
	We have a pretty good local authority. Under therevised comprehensive performance assessment methodology this year, the council has been assessed as a three-star authority. Last year, it was rated as good, which is the second highest rating. Under the new methodology, the direction of travel judgment concludes that the council has
	improved well over the last 12 months. It has made some significant improvements to services important to local people.
	The council offers good value for money, with costs generally below average.

Annette Brooke: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the continuing poor settlement year after year along with exactly the same cost pressures, such as the increasing wages that are a big component of local government expenditure, inevitably means that there have to be cuts in sectors in which costs are rising steeply? For example, there are cuts across the board, including cuts in social and respite care in social services. Does he share my concern that our constituents will lose out big time if this continues year after year?

Robert Syms: I agree with the hon. Lady with whom I share representation of the borough of Poole. Both the Conservative and Liberal groups have a common front in trying to get a better grant for Poole. Both parties feel that we are not being very well treated.
	The council is looking to make significant efficiencies in next year's budget, and it is expecting to make them beyond the Gershon review. I am fortunate to be able to say that, although the council's final decision will be made on 16 February, it is looking as though there will be a 3.5 per cent. increase. Such an increase takes a lot of hard work and one way that the council was able to introduce an increase of that level despite bad funding from central Government is by keeping high vacancy levels and controlling staffing to increase its balances. It keeps control in that way. It is very much aware that our profile of an elderly population means that many people on fixed incomes find it difficult to meet a substantial part of their budget, so it is doing all that it can to minimise the tax burden on local people.
	Poole people get significantly less Government funding and there are the whole range of costs that the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) mentioned. We expect annual pay settlements to go up by 3 per cent. and there are additional recruitment and retention pressures. The changes to advance corporation tax have had a big impact on local authority pensions, and Poole local authority workers are mainly part of the Dorset pension scheme that has suffered and requires more money. Waste management, street cleansing, licensing, highway maintenance and the EU hazardous waste directive present further costs, and the council is also looking at paying, with an increase this year, about 1.2 million in landfill tax that eventually goes back to the Treasury. They are very real costs.
	Let us contrast and compare where we are. Fortunately, Poole is not at the bottom of the list of all-purpose authorities. That place is taken by Wokingham, which is preceded by Windsor and Maidenhead, Rutland and then Poole. Poole's formula grant per head is 166.53. Of course, there are no doubt different circumstances in the all-purpose unitary authorities, but let us consider a few boroughs that may have a similar profile to Poole. For example, I know that my colleagues in Bournemouth next door do not think that they are very well funded, but it receives 293.61, which is 127 more than Poole. Some of the streets in Poole stop where those in Bournemouth start, and there are probably slightly more people on benefit in Bournemouth because there are more hostels there. However, the difference is substantial when it is sometimes difficult to tell whether one is in Poole or in Bournemouth.
	I guess that Torbay's profileit is a seaside and retirement areais not dissimilar to that of Poole. The formula grant per head in Torbay is 328.01, which is 161 more than Poole. I suspect that Brighton and Hove faces many issues similar to those faced in the Bournemouth and Poole area, but it gets 385.29. We are very much adrift from many comparable authorities.

Philip Hollobone: I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. I know how hard he works on behalf of his constituents, and he is raising an important issue. Has he not just highlighted the fact that one of the big problems with local government finance is that the system is simply not transparent? No one really understands how the Government work out the formula funding.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I must urge hon. Members not to widen the debate, which is quite clearly on local government funding for Poole. If Adjournment debates get extended due to general interventions, the Minister replying to the hon. Member who has secured the debate sometimes ends up with insufficient time to do so.

Robert Syms: Of course the problem that my hon. Friend highlights applies to Poole. When local authority officers in the borough of Poole examine how the grant is calculated, it is difficult for them to work out why we do so badly. If we had a better idea of how the grant was calculated, perhaps we could more effectively make representations to try to put the situation right.
	Let me touch on this year's dedicated schools grant. The Minister's constituency goes across two London boroughs: Tower Hamlets and Newham. The dedicated schools grant for Tower Hamlets is 5,610 a pupil and Newham receives 4,526 a pupil. Poole receives a dedicated schools grants of 3,349 a pupil. A secondary school with 1,600 pupils in Tower Hamlets would thus receive 8.976 million, while such a school in Poole would receive 5.3 million. I know that there are specific problems in Tower Hamlets, such as linguistic problems, and I do not wish to do down the Minister's constituency, but the gap is large and I hope that the Government will start to do something about it.
	The precept of Poole borough council is not the only worry. Dorset fire and rescue service has concerns, especially about the way in which the new pension arrangements have been worked out. Although it welcomes the new pension arrangements, it thinks that there is a shortfall of 950,000. I have received a long letter from Dorset police. It is the second lowest funded authority in the country and has one of the highest precepts. It has real problems and estimates that a 1 million pension shortfall will have to be met by council tax payers. There is pressure from all directions on my constituents.
	We in Poole have done our best over the years to make our case. Delegations have been to see Ministers, and Baroness Andrews cordially received me, the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole, Dr. Brian Leverett, who is the leader of the council, and Mr. Mike Brooke, who is leader of the Liberal Democrats on the council, when we went to lobby her. We invited her to come to look at Poole so that she could see that we needed more grant. I hope that the Minister or one of his colleagues will come to Poole to see our problems and not only the wealthy parts, but some of the deprived areas, because we do not think that they are being addressed by the grant that we are receiving.
	There is a sense of grievance in Poole. What we get puts us very much at the bottom of the league, although that does not mean that all our outputs are bad, as can be seen from our provision for schools and the way in which the council conducts its business. The council has been a good authority for several years and has attracted good officers. However, a council has to work much harder when its funding is low. When Poole's situation is compared with that of Bournemouth and other south-coast authorities with similar problems, one sees that we are badly treated.
	I know that the grant is fixed for this year and that nothing can be done about it following last week's votes. However, I hope that the Minister will reflect on what I have said. Poole will come back next year to make further representations to try to improve our support. Poole deserves more support for not only the people who work hard for Poole council, but the services that the council provides.

Jim Fitzpatrick: I congratulate the hon. Member for Poole (Mr. Syms) on securing the opportunity to debate local government funding for Poole unitary authority. I agree with the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr. Hollobone) that the hon. Gentleman has a respected reputation for effectively and assiduously representing his constituents. Let me give the hon. Member for Poole the only aspect of my response that might offer him some respite from the rest of my speech: my hon. Friend the Minister for Local Government has accepted an invitation from Poole to meet the authority next month. That will offer local MPs and local authority members an opportunity to make direct representations, in addition to those made between the initial announcement of the local government finance settlement and the most recent announcement.

Robert Syms: I thank the Minister for that. The Minister of State will get his ear bent, but the visit will be worth it none the less.

Jim Fitzpatrick: Before this debate, having seen that the hon. Gentleman had secured it, my hon. Friend the Minister of State advised me that I ought to offer the information about his visit in the spirit of solidarity. We are confident in the decisions that we have made, but we want to engage with local authorities to ensure that we explain our decisions and reconcile them with strong local feelings. I am sure that my hon. Friend looks forward to the opportunity to engage with local representatives next month.
	The debate provides a useful opportunity to discuss this year's local government finance settlement and to look at the consequences for Poole, but let me start by commenting on our decisions on the funding of local government revenue expenditure for 200607 and 200708, which were made following consultation. I appreciate that many of the points raised in the debate by the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) were made and reinforced by the delegation from Poole that met Baroness Andrews on 11 January. Let me assure hon. Members that the points raised were taken into account in reaching our final decisions on the settlement.
	Total revenue grants to English local authorities will be 62.1 billion in 200607 and 65.1 billion in 200708. That represents increases over the next two years of 4.5 per cent. and 5 per cent. respectively. Of those totals, 24.8 billion and 25.6 billion will be grant that is distributed as formula grant, which provides above-inflation increases of 3 per cent. and 3.7 per cent. respectively.
	To get a fuller picture of the Government grant available to Poole, we should include in the comparison the dedicated schools grant, since funding for schools was included in the formula grant in 200506. Including schools funding, Poole will receive grant increases of 5.8 per cent. in 200607 and 4.3 per cent. in 200708. In total we will provide specific grants amounting to 37.3 billion and 39.4 billion over the next two years. That is a key element of the overall picture, particularly as those specific grant totals include funding for schoolsthe Government's No.1 priority. We have also been able to provide a two-year settlement for the supporting people grant programme, with 1.685 billion allocated for 200607, and we have so far announced allocations of 95 per cent. of the grant for 200708.
	For the first time, in 200607 we have announced two-year grant allocations for every local authority in England. We have put a premium on stability and predictability of funding. That builds upon the work we have been doing over the past few years in freezing grant formulae and allocating specific grants in advance. We have now announced two-year individual allocations of formula grant for every authority; and more than 90 per cent. of all specific grants that can be allocated in advance have been allocated for 200607 and 200708.
	The first full three-year settlement will be introduced alongside the next spending review round, with which all hon. Members are familiar. In the interests of further stability, we have made grant floors a permanent part of the grant distribution system. Floors guarantee a minimum year-on-year grant increase and curb the volatility of grant levels for individual local authorities. Poole has benefited from the grant floor in both 200607 and 200708, which has ensured that it will receive a reasonable increase in grant in each of these years.
	The hon. Gentleman was concerned about the calculation of the formula grant. This year, we have reformed the grant calculation system. The new system has the advantage of removing the old assumptions about spending and tax from the calculation of grant. As a result, it devolves more accountability to local authorities. Many authorities have said that they find the new system difficult to understand. I readily concede that it is still complex. However, in the past we have found that local authorities were concerned that simplifying the grant calculation would, in their view, reduce the fairness and the responsiveness of the system. Our policy therefore is to make the system simpler.
	For the present, the new system is simpler in principle. Grant distribution is now determined by four things: a relative needs formula, an amount relative to the resources that can be raised locally based on the property profile, a central allocation per head and grant damping. The relative needs and resource elements should be broadly familiar to the hon. Gentleman, since the system has long contained formulaic estimates of relative need and relative ability to raise council tax.

Peter Bone: You talk about grant floors. Are there also grant ceilings?

Jim Fitzpatrick: rose

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Bone) should refer to the Minister in the third person. I repeat my ruling about the purpose of this Adjournment debate.

Jim Fitzpatrick: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am grateful for your protection. If the hon. Gentleman wants to drop me a line on that specific question, I am sure that we will be able to provide a detailed answer. As the hon. Member for Poole said, sometimes the point is not simply to make representations in respect of this particular year; it is to lay foundations for arguments for subsequent years. This is an ongoing dialogue with local authorities. The Minister for Local Government's visit to Poole next month will be part of that.
	The central allocation makes explicit what was always implicit in the systemthat after taking account of differences in relative needs and resources, some of the grant is allocated on a per capita basis. We regard stability as a key issue in local government funding. I have already made it clear that the grant floor is a long-term part of the funding system.
	The hon. Gentleman raised issues about the funding formula. To work out each council's share of formula grant, we need first to calculate the relative needs formulae, which include information on the population, social structure and other characteristics of each authority. Each of the main services provided by councils has its own relative needs formula. There are seven formulae in all for children's services, adult social services, police, fire, highways maintenance, environmental, protective and cultural services, and capital finance. The formulae assess the relative need for a particular service in each area based on the characteristics of the area.
	The hon. Member for Poole suggested that the funding formulae do not recognise the significant pockets of deprivation within Poole. However, most of the funding formulae take account of the relative levels of deprivation in each area. For example, in calculating Poole's relative need for children's social care, we take account of the proportion of local children in income support households and the proportion of working age adults who claim income support. To calculate the relative needs formula for environmental, protective and cultural services, we take account of rates of incapacity benefit, income support and other unemployment related benefits in each area. It is wrong to say that the funding formulae ignore deprivation factors in Poole or elsewhere. In fact, our formulae take detailed account of the relative levels of deprivation in each local authority area.
	The hon. Gentleman suggested that the higher than average number of ageing people in Poole places a greater strain on social services. However, that is taken into account in the older people's social services funding formula, which is based on the number of pensioners in each area, their levels of deprivation and the proportion of very old people living in each area. The Government are committed to ensuring that local authorities can deliver effective local services without needing to impose excessive increases in council tax.

Annette Brooke: I, too, am grateful for the proposed visit by the Minister for Local Government. Is there any work on the methodology of the area cost adjustment to take account of the special characteristic in Poole and Dorset of high house prices and low average salaries?

Jim Fitzpatrick: I can assure the hon. Lady, notwithstanding representations that she has made with local colleagues, as well as representations by the local authority, that there is an ongoing assessment of the area cost adjustment and all the factors involved. In reaching the local government financial settlement for each area, the Department bases its calculations on all the evidence presented by its own sources and, indeed, by local authority sources. As I said in response to the hon. Member for Poole, a dialogue is under way. There is continual assessment and reassessment, and any evidence or information that is presented is taken into account and assessed. Conclusions are reached by civil servants, and final submissions are made to Ministers, who make announcements to the House. We are open to representations and so on. Some people may think that certain factors are not taken into account, but I can assure the hon. Lady that all representations are considered very seriously.
	We have worked closely with the Local Government Association to look at the pressures that councils will face in the next two years, and the ways in which central and local government can manage those pressures. We accept that there are pressures on councils, especially waste management and social services, which is why we have provided an extra 305 million in 200607 and 508 million in 200708 in formula grant above what was previously planned. We are satisfied that the settlement following the spending review 2004, coupled with the significant extra investment that we have made in recent years, is sufficient to fund all the cost pressures that local authorities face in delivering services over the next two years.
	We have agreed to work jointly with local government in a number of areas. We will work with the Local Government Association to take account of pressures, and we will focus on pay, adult social care and waste in the context of the 2007 comprehensive spending review. We will introduce a strengthened new burdens procedure, and we have reaffirmed our commitment to discuss new burdens with local government as well as the measures to mitigate them. I understand the concerns of people in Poole, particularly of pensioners on fixed incomes and others on low incomes who are worried that the settlement may impose another large increase in council tax for the next two years. There is no need for them to be anxious but, given the average 3.4 per cent. increase in formula grant until 200708 that Poole has received since 1997, residents are right to express dismay at the persistently high council tax increases imposed on them and the proposed increase for the forthcoming year.
	Given the Government's significant extra investment in public services and the scope for efficiency improvements, it is unacceptable for local authorities to set large increases in council tax. The average council tax increases in both 200607 and 200708, as we have said, should be less than 5 per cent. We have made it clear that we are prepared to use our powers to cap any excessive council tax increases, and we have done so in the past two years.
	In conclusion, I can assure the hon. Member for Poole, his colleagues and his constituents that I understand fully the points he has raised today. We have provided a good settlement overall, and, given the significant investment in local services, we believe local authorities can and should deliver council tax rises below 5 per cent. in 200607 and 200708. I will alert my hon. Friend the Minister of State to matters raised in this debate before his visit to Poole next month.
	Question put and agreed to.
	Adjourned accordingly at thirteen minutes past Eleven o'clock.